


Saturated Sunrise

by FlyingFleshEater



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/F, Grey-aromantic character, Lesbian Twilight, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Queer Twilight, Queer Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-04-28 14:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5094356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingFleshEater/pseuds/FlyingFleshEater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twilight, but 100% queer. What we all wished we had when we were 14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or Life and Death or any of the characters therein. This is a splice of the two with very little original embellishment. I am making no money from this and am only posting it for fun.   
> There's already a few out there, but they're all a little different. This one features Gray-Aromantic Bella, because it was super easy, and OCD Bella, because when Meyer said that Beau was "more OCD" than Bella, what she really meant was "more finicky" and it was actually super easy to make Bella actually OCD.

 

I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and she looked pleasantly back at me.

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.

I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

The hunter’s smile was almost friendly as she sauntered forward to kill me.


	2. First Sight

 

My mom drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. Though it was January everywhere else, it was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, and the sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this insignificant town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its depressing gloom that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been forced to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally started making ultimatums; these past three summers, my other mom, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

Yet somehow, I now found myself exiled to Forks for the rest of my high school education. A year and a half. It felt like a prison sentence. Eighteen months, hard time. When I slammed the car door behind me, it made a sound like the clang of iron bars locking into place

Okay, just a tad melodramatic there. I have an overactive imagination, as my mom was fond of telling me. And, of course, this was my choice. Self-imposed exile.

Didn’t make it any easier.

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the dry heat, and the vigorous, sprawling city. And I loved living with my mom, where I was needed.

"Bella," my mom said to me — the last of a hundred times — just before I got to the TSA post. "You don't have to do this."

My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. Her chin is pointy and her lips full, which is not like me, but we do have the exact same eyes. On her they’re childlike, which makes her look like my sister rather than my mom. We get that all the time and though she pretends not to, she loves it. On me they’re less childlike and more…unresolved.

Staring at those wide, worried eyes so much like my own, I felt panicked. I’d been taking care of my mom for my whole life. I mean, I’m sure there must have been a time, probably when I was still in diapers, that I wasn’t in charge of the bills and paperwork and cooking and general level-headedness, but I couldn’t remember it.

Was leaving my mom to fend for herself really the right thing to do? It had seemed like it was, during the months I’d struggled toward this decision. But it felt all kinds of wrong now

Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost…She didn’t need me as much anymore.

"I _want_ to go," I lied. I'd never been a good liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it almost sounded convincing now.

"Tell Charlie I said hi."

"I will."

"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want —I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

"Don't worry about me," I insisted. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I walked through the metal detectors, and she was gone.

It's a three-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying has never bothered me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.

Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. She seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with her for the first time with any degree of permanence. She'd already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car.

But it was sure to be awkward. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, probably a necessary thing for living with my mother. Aside from that, I didn't know what there was to say. I knew she was more than a little confused by my decision — like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.

When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen— just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.

Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite my serious lack of funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane.

"It's good to see you, Bells," she said, smiling as she automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?"

"Mom's great. It's good to see you, too, Ma." I wasn't supposed to call her Charlie to her face.

“You really feel okay about leaving her?”

We both understood that this question wasn’t about my own personal happiness. It was about whether I was shirking my responsibility to look after her. This was the reason Charlie had never fought Mom about custody; she knew Mom needed me.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”

“Fair enough.”

I only had two big duffel bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for the Washington climate. Mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," she announced when we were strapped in.

"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way she said "good car for _you_ " as opposed to just "good car."

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?"

"Do you remember Bonnie Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the nearby coastline.

"No."

"She and her husband used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.

That would explain why I didn't remember her. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

"She's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so she can't drive anymore, and she offered to sell me her truck cheap."

"What year is it?" I could see from her change of expression that this was the question she was hoping I wouldn't ask.

"Well, Bonnie's had a lot of work done on the engine — it's only a few years old, really."

I hoped she didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did she buy it?"

"She bought it in 1984, I think."

"Did she buy it new?"

"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties — or late fifties at the earliest," she admitted sheepishly.

"Ch — Ma, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic…"

"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."

 _The thing_ , I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at the very least.

"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on.

"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.

Wow. Free.

"You didn't need to do that, Ma. I was going to buy myself a car."

"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." She was looking ahead at the road when she said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing her emotions out loud. That’s something we had in common. So I was looking straight-ahead as I responded.

"That's really nice, Ma. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that she was talking about impossibilities. It wouldn’t help anything for her to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth — or engine.

"Well, now, you're welcome," she mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.

It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

It was too green — an alien planet.

Eventually we made it to Charlie's. She still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that she'd bought with Mom in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new — well, new to me — truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab.

To my intense surprise, I loved it. I wasn’t really a car person, so I was kind of surprised by my own reaction. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged —the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had just destroyed.

"Wow, Ma, I love it! Thanks!" Serious enthusiasm this time. Not only was the truck strangely cool, but now I wouldn’t have to walk two miles in the rain to school in the morning. Or accept a ride in the cruiser, which was obviously worst-case scenario.

"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.

It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window that wouldn’t open —these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.

There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie, but I’d had to share with my mom before, and that was definitely worse. She had a lot more stuff, and she doggedly resisted all my attempts to organize any of it, no matter how anxious the mess made me.

One of the best things about Charlie is she doesn't hover. She left me alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether impossible for Mom. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look comfortable; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape. I wasn't in the mood to go on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime, when I would have to think about the coming morning.

Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven — now fifty-eight — students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together — their grandparents had been toddlers together. I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, something to stare at and whisper about.

Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. Come in all popular, homecoming queen style. But there was no hiding the fact that I was not that girl. I should be tan, sporty, blonde — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, maybe — all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself — and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.

Instead, I was the girl that was too quiet and too pale, who didn’t know anything about makeup or fashion or dating or anything that girls my age were supposed to be into.

Unlike the other girls, I didn’t have a ton of free time for hobbies. I had a checkbook to balance, a clogged drain to snake, and a week’s groceries to shop for.

Or I used to.

When I finished putting my clothes in the old pine dresser, I took my bag of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean myself up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the light, but already I looked sallower, unhealthy.

Facing my pallid reflection in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?

So I didn’t relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closest to of anyone on the planet, never really understood me. Sometime I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Like, maybe what I saw as green was what everyone else saw as red. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. A fault in my code.

But the cause didn’t matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.

I didn't sleep well that night, even after I was done crying and despite my medication making me drowsy. The constant _whooshing_ of the rain and wind across the roof wouldn't fade into the background. I pulled the faded old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too. But I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight, when the rain finally settled into a quiet drizzle.

Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like that prison cage I’d imagined.

Breakfast with Charlie was quiet. She wished me good luck at school. I thanked her, knowing her hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid me.

Charlie left first, off to the police station that was her wife and family. After she left, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three unmatching chairs and stared at the familiar kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor. Nothing had changed. My mother had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house. Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by the procession of my school pictures up to last year’s. Those were embarrassing to look at — the bad haircuts, the braces years, and the acne that had finally cleared up. I would have to see what I could do to get Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I was living here.

It was impossible, being in this house, not to realize that Charlie had never gotten over my mom. It made me uncomfortable.

I didn't want to be too early to school, but I couldn't stay in the house anymore. I donned my jacket — thick, non-breathing plastic, like a biohazard suit —and headed out into the rain.

It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eaves by the door, and locked up. I checked the lock four times just to make sure it was latched. The sloshing of my new waterproof boots sounded strange. I missed the normal crunch of gravel as I walked. I couldn’t pause and admire my truck again as I wanted; I was in a hurry to get out of the misty wet that swirled around my head and clung to my hair under my hood.

Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Bonnie or Charlie had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. The engine started quickly, to my relief, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. Well, a truck this old was bound to have a flaw. The antique radio worked, a plus that I hadn't expected.

Finding the school wasn't difficult, though I'd never been there before; like most other things, it was just off the highway. It was not obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be the Forks High School, made me stop. It looked like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon-colored bricks. There were so many trees and shrubs I couldn't see its size at first. Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered. Where were the chain-link fences, the metal detectors?

I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading FRONT OFFICE. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer than I'd hoped. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. Plants grew everywhere in large plastic pots, as if there wasn’t enough greenery outside. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly colored flyers taped to its front. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a large, red-haired woman wearing glasses. She was wearing a purple t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed for the weather.

The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Daughter of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.

"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school." She brought several sheets to the counter to show me.

She went through my classes for me, highlighting the best route to each on the map, and gave me a slip to have each teacher sign, which I was to bring back at the end of the day. She smiled at me and hoped, like Charlie, that I would like it here in Forks. I smiled back as convincingly as I could.

When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I’d lived in one of the few lower-income neighborhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a brand- new silver Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.

I looked at the map in the truck, trying to memorize it now; hopefully I wouldn’t have to walk around with it stuck in front of my nose all day. I stuffed everything in my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and sucked in a huge breath. _It won’t be that bad_ , I lied to myself feebly. Seriously, though, this wasn’t life and death, it was just high school. It wasn’t like anyone was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck, walking around it a few times to check my parking and hoping that didn’t draw attention to me.

I kept my face pulled back into my hood as I walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers. My plain black jacket didn't stand out, I noticed with relief.

Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black "3" was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats through the door.

The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here.

I took the slip up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason. He gawked at me when he saw my name — not an encouraging response — and of course I flushed tomato red. At least he sent me to an empty desk at the back without introducing me to the class.

It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in the back, but somehow, they managed. I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything. That was comforting… and boring. I wondered if my mom would send me my folder of old essays, or if she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments with her in my head while the teacher droned on.

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a skinny Asian girl with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" She looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

"Bella," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

"Where's your next class?" she asked.

I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful. "I'm Erica," she added.

I forced a smile. "Thanks."

We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid on top of my anxiety.

"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" she asked.

"Very."

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" she wondered.

"Sunny," I told her.

"You don't look very tan."

"My mother is part albino."

She studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm. “A joke.”

“Oh.”

We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Erica walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked.

“Well, good luck," she said as I touched the handle. "Maybe we'll have some other classes together." She sounded hopeful.

I smiled at her, in what I hoped was not an encouraging way, and went inside.

The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own boots on the way to my seat.

After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map.

One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with met the cafeteria for lunch. She was tiny, several inches shorter than my five feet four inches, but her wildly curly black hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn’t try to keep up.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. At least I couldn’t complain about the manners here. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. The girl from English, Erica, waved at me from across the room, and they all laughed. Already the butt of the joke. It was probably a new record for me. But none of them seemed mean-spirited about it.

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.

They didn't look anything alike.

They were all girls; one I could tell was super tall, even sitting down—her legs went on forever. She looked like she might be the captain of the volleyball team, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want to get in the way of one of her spikes if her impressive arms were anything to judge her by. She had dark curly hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail.

Another had hair the color of honey hanging to her shoulders; she was not quite as tall as the brunette but still probably taller than most of the boys I’d seen around school. There was something intense about her, edgy. It was kind of weird, but for some reason she made me think of this actress I’d seen in an action movie a few weeks ago, who took down a dozen guys with a machete. I remembered thinking then that I didn’t buy it—there was no way the actress could have taken on that many bad guys and won. But I thought now that I might have bought it all if the character had been played by _this_ girl.

There was another blonde, with hair more golden than honey, gently waving to the middle of her back. She was statuesque, tall but not so much as the other two. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room.

The shortest girl was pixie like, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.

The last girl was a more average height, with hair somewhere between red and brown, but different than either, kind of metallic somehow, a bronze color. She looked younger than the others, who could have been in college, easy.

Totally different, and yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. There were deep shadows under their eyes— purplish shadows, like bruises. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Except their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.

But all this is not why I couldn't look away.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine or on a billboard. Or in a museum, painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to believe they were real.

I decided the most beautiful of all was the girl with the bronze-colored hair, though I expected a lot of other people would go for the golden blonde model. They would be wrong, though. I mean, all of them were gorgeous, but that girl was something more than just beautiful. She was absolutely perfect. It was an upsetting, disturbing kind of perfection. It made my stomach uneasy.

They were all looking away; away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. It reminded me of models posed oh so artistically for an ad- aesthetic ennui. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray — unopened soda, unbitten apple — and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, wondering if they had a dance company her in town, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging.

"Who are _they_?" I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I’d forgotten.

As she looked up to see who I meant — though he could probably guess from my tone — suddenly she looked at us, the perfect one, the youngest, perhaps. She looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then her dark eyes flickered to mine. Long eyes, angled up at the corners, thick lashes.

She looked away quickly, faster than I could, though in a flush of embarrassment I dropped my eyes at once. In that brief flash of a glance, her expression wasn’t interested at all— it was as if her name had been called, and she'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.

My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.

She muttered her answer under her breath. “Those are the Cullens and the Hales. Edith and Eleanor Cullen, Jessamine and Rosalie Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen. They live with Dr. Cullen and her wife.”

I glanced sideways at the perfect girl, who was looking at her tray now, picking a bagel to pieces with long, pale fingers. Her mouth was moving very quickly, her full lips barely opening. The other three still looked away, and yet I felt she was speaking quietly to them.

Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here — small town names? I finally remembered that my neighbor was named Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.

"They are all… very good-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.

"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all _together_ though —Eleanor and Rosalie, and Jessamine and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small-town, I thought critically. But, if I was being honest, I had to admit that even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip.

Still, I didn’t know why, but her reaction made me want to defend them. Maybe just because she sounded so judgmental. But what could I say? I didn’t know anything about them, and I didn’t know if her issue was because they were all girls or because they all lived together.

"Which ones are the Cullen’s?" I asked, wanting to change the tone but not the subject. "They don't look related…well, I mean, sort of…"

"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in her early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are sisters, twins —the blondes — and they're foster children."

"They look a little old for foster children."

"They are now, Jessamine and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."

"That's really kind of amazing — for them to take care of all those kids like that, when they're so young and everything."

"I guess so," Jessica admitted, though it sounded like she’d rather not say anything positive, as if she didn’t like the doctor and her wife. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children, I would presume the reason was jealousy. "I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," she added, as if that lessened their kindness.

Through all this conversation, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the strange family for more than a few seconds at a time. They continued to look at the walls and not eat.

"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked. Surely I would have noticed them on one of my summers here.

"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to anew arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

I felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.

As I examined them, the perfect girl, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with obvious curiosity. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed that her glance held some kind of unmet expectation.

"Which one is the girl with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at her from the corner of my eye, and she was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today — she had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.

"That's Edith. She's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. She doesn’t date. Apparently no one here is good-looking enough for her." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. That cleared up that her issue with the Cullens wasn’t that they were queer. I wondered when Edith had turned her down.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. Then I glanced at her again. Her face was turned away, but I thought her cheek appeared lifted, as if she were smiling, too.

After a few more minutes, the four of them left the table together. They all were noticeably graceful — even the big, brawny one. It was unsettling to watch. Edith didn't look at me again.

I sat at the table with Jessica and her friends longer than I would have if I'd been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me that her name was Angela, had Biology II with me the next hour. We walked to class together in silence. She was quiet, too.

When we entered the classroom, Angela went to sit at a black-topped lab table exactly like the ones I was used to. She already had a neighbor. In fact, all the tables were filled but one. Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edith Cullen by her unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.

My heart started pounding a little faster. It was weird. I’d never had that sort of reaction to a beautiful person before. It wasn’t anxiety, it was excitement.

As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my slip signed, I was watching her surreptitiously. Just as I passed, she suddenly went rigid in her seat. Her face jerked up toward mine so fast it surprised me, staring with the strangest expression—it was more than angry, it was furious, hostile. I looked away quickly, shocked, going red again. I stumbled over a book in the walkway and had to catch myself on the edge of a table. The girl sitting there giggled.

I’d been right about the eyes. They were black — coal black.

Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book with no nonsense about introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had no choice but to send me to the one open seat in the middle of the room. I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by _her_ , confused and awkward, wondering what I could have done to earn the antagonistic glare she’d given me.

I didn't look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I saw her posture change from the corner of my eye. She was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of her chair and averting her face like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my hair. It smelled like strawberries, the scent of my favorite shampoo. It seemed an innocent enough odor. I let my hair fall over my right shoulder, making a dark curtain between us. I scooted my chair to the right, giving her as much space as I could, and tried to pay attention to the teacher.

Unfortunately the lecture was on cellular anatomy, something I'd already studied. I took notes carefully anyway, always looking down.

I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally through the screen of my hair at the strange girl next to me. During the whole class, she never relaxed her stiff position on the edge of her chair, sitting as far from me as possible with her hair hiding most of her face like me. Her hand was clenched into a fist on top of her left thigh, tendons standing out under her pale skin. This, too, she never relaxed. She had the sleeves of her white Henley pushed up to her elbows, and her forarm flexed with surprisingly hard muscle beneath her pale skin. I couldn’t help but notice how perfect that skin was. Not one freckle, not one scar.

The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for her tight fist to loosen? It never did; she continued to sit so still it looked like she wasn't even breathing. What was wrong with her? Was this her normal behavior? I questioned my quick judgment on Jessica's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.

It couldn't have anything to do with me. She didn't know me from Eve.

Mr. Banner passed some quizzes back when the class was almost done. She handed me one to give to the girl. I glanced at the top automatically—one hundred percent…and I’d been spelling her name wrong in my head. It was Edythe, not Edith. I’d never seen it spelled that way, but it fit her better.

I glanced over at her as I slid the paper over, and then instantly regretted it. She was glaring at me again, her black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from the hate radiating from her, shrinking against my chair, the phrase _if looks could kill_ suddenly ran through my mind.

At that moment, the bell rang loudly, making me jump, and Edythe Cullen was out of her seat. She moved like a dancer, every perfect line of her slim body in harmony with all the others, her back to me, and she was out the door before anyone else was out of their seat.

I sat frozen in my seat, staring blankly after her. She was so harsh. It wasn’t fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger and confusion that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. How could I have done anything? We hadn’t even really met.

"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a female voice asked.

I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced girl, her hair carefully flat-ironed into a pale blonde curtain, smiling at me in a friendly way. She obviously didn’t think I smelled bad.

"Bella," I corrected her, with a smile.

"I'm McKayla."

"Hi, McKayla."

"Do you need any help finding your next class?"

"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."

"That's my next class, too." She seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.

We walked to class together; she was a chatterer — she supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. She'd lived in California till she was ten, so she knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my English class also. She was the nicest person I'd met today.

But as we were entering the gym, she asked, "So, did you stab Edythe Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen her act like that."

I cringed. So I wasn't the only one who had noticed. And, apparently, that _wasn't_ Edythe Cullen's usual behavior. I decided to play dumb.

"Was that the girl I sat next to in Biology?"

"Yes," she said. "She looked like she was in pain or something."

"I don't know," I responded. "I never spoke to her."

"She’s weird." McKayla lingered by me instead of heading to the dressing room. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you." She headed into the girl’s locker room and I followed her with a weak smile. She was kind and seemed to like me, but that wasn’t enough to make me forget the last strange hour.

The Gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform but didn't make me dress down for today's class. At home, only two years of P.E. were required. Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth.

I watched four volleyball games running simultaneously. Remembering how many injuries I had sustained — and inflicted — playing volleyball, I felt faintly nauseated.

The final bell rang at last. I walked slowly to the office to return my paperwork. The rain had drifted away, but the wind was strong, and colder. I zipped my jacket up and wrapped my arms around myself.

When I walked into the warm office, I almost turned around and walked back out.

Edythe Cullen stood at the desk in front of me. I recognized again that tousled bronze hair. She didn't appear to notice the sound of my entrance. I stood pressed against the back wall, waiting for the receptionist to be free.

She was arguing with her in a low, velvety voice. I quickly picked up the gist of the argument. She was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology to another time — any other time.

This could _not_ be about me. It had to be something else, something that happened before I entered the Biology room. The look on her face must have been about another aggravation entirely. It was impossible that a stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me. I wasn’t interesting enough to be worth that strong of a reaction.

The door opened again, and the cold wind suddenly gusted through the room, rustling the papers on the desk, swirling my hair around my face. The girl who came in merely stepped to the desk, placed a note in the wire basket, and walked out again. But Edythe Cullen's back stiffened, and she turned slowly to glare at me — her face was absurdly beautiful —with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine _fear_ , raising the hair on my arms. As if she were going to pull a gun out and shoot me. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind. She turned back to the receptionist.

"Never mind, then," she said hastily in a voice like silk. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." And she turned on her heel without another look at me, and disappeared out the door.

I went meekly to the desk, my face white for once instead of red, and handed her the signed slip.

"How did your first day go, dear?" the receptionist asked maternally.

"Fine," I lied, my voice weak. She didn't look convinced.

When I got to the truck, it was almost the last car in the lot. It seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home I had in this damp green hole. I sat inside for a while, just staring out the windshield blankly. But soon I was cold enough to need the heater, so I turned the key and the engine roared to life. I headed back to Charlie's house, trying to think of nothing at all.


	3. Open Book

 

The next day was better… and worse.

It was better because it wasn't raining yet, though the clouds were dense and black. It was easier because I knew what to expect of my day. McKayla came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Erica glaring at her all the while; that was kind of flattering. People didn't look at me quite as much as they had yesterday. I sat with a big group at lunch that included McKayla, Erica, Jessica, Angela and several other people whose names and faces I now remembered. I began to feel like I was treading water, instead of drowning in it.

It was worse because I was tired; I still couldn't sleep with the wind echoing around the house. It was worse because Mr. Varner called on me in Trig when my hand wasn't raised and I had the wrong answer. It was miserable because I had to play volleyball, and the one time I didn't cringe out of the way of the ball, I hit two of my teammates in the head with one bad volley. And it was worse because Edythe Cullen wasn't in school at all.

All morning I was dreading lunch, not wanting to remember those hate-filled stares. Part of me wanted to confront her and demand to know what her problem was. While I was lying sleepless in my bed, I even imagined what I would say. But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the Terminator.

But when I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica — trying to keep my eyes from sweeping the place for her and failing entirely — I saw that her four sisters of sorts were sitting together at the same table as before, and she was not with them.

McKayla intercepted us and steered us to her table. Jessica seemed elated by the attention, and her friends quickly joined us. But as I tried to listen to their easy chatter, I was terribly uncomfortable, waiting nervously for the moment Edythe would arrive. I hoped that she would simply ignore me when she came, and prove that I was making a big deal out of nothing.

She didn't come, and as time passed I grew more and more tense.

I walked to Biology with more confidence when, by the end of lunch, he still hadn't showed. McKayla, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by my side to class. I held my breath at the door, but Edythe Cullen wasn't there, either. I exhaled and went to my seat. McKayla followed, talking about an upcoming trip to the beach. She lingered by my desk till the bell rang. Then she smiled at me wistfully and went to sit by a girl with braces and a bad perm.

I didn’t want to be arrogant, but I was fairly certain she was interested in me, which was a strange feeling. Girls hadn’t noticed me much at home, which had been fine with me. I hadn’t really paid much attention to girls or boys at all. I wondered if I wanted her to like me. She was pretty and everything, but her attention made me feel uncomfortable. I wondered why that was. I’d never really been interested in anyone before, but someone else’s interest in me shouldn’t bother me. I really hoped it wasn’t because of the time I’d spent staring at Edythe Cullen yesterday, but I was kind of afraid that was it. Which was about the stupidest thing possible, really. If I based my reaction to a girl’s looks off a face like Edythe’s, I was doomed for life. That was a fantasy, not reality.  

I was relieved that I had the desk to myself, that Edythe was absent. I told myself that repeatedly. But I couldn't get rid of the nagging suspicion that I was the reason she wasn't there. It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn't stop worrying that it was true.

When the school day was finally done, and the blush was fading out of my cheeks from the volleyball incident, I changed quickly back into my jeans and navy blue sweater. I hurried from the girls' locker room, pleased to find that I had successfully evaded my retriever friend for the moment. I walked swiftly out to the parking lot. It was crowded now with fleeing students. I got in my truck and dug through my bag to make sure I had what I needed.

Last night I'd discovered that Charlie couldn't cook much besides fried eggs and bacon. So I requested that I be assigned kitchen detail for the duration of my stay. He was willing enough to hand over the keys to the banquet hall. I also found out that he had no food in the house. So I had my shopping list and the cash from the jar in the cupboard labeled FOOD MONEY, and I was on my way to the Thriftway.

 I gunned my deafening engine to life, ignoring the heads that turned in my direction, and backed carefully into a place in the line of cars that were waiting to exit the parking lot. As I waited, trying to pretend that the earsplitting rumble was coming from someone else's car, I saw the two Cullens and the Hale twins getting into their car. It was the shiny new Volvo. Of course. I hadn't noticed their clothes before — I'd been too mesmerized by their faces. Now that I looked, it was obvious that they were all dressed exceptionally well; simply, but in clothes that subtly hinted at designer origins. With their remarkable good looks, the style with which they carried themselves, they could have worn dishrags and pulled it off. It seemed excessive for them to have both looks and money. But as far as I could tell, life worked that way most of the time. It didn't look as if it bought them any acceptance here.

No, I didn't fully believe that. The isolation must be their desire; I couldn't imagine any door that wouldn't be opened by that degree of beauty.

They looked at my noisy truck as I passed them, just like everyone else. Except they weren’t anything like anyone else. I saw the blonde model, Rosalie, had her hand casually on the hip of the really tall girl with the dark curly hair, who looked like she was very familiar with the weight room. She was obviously pretty sure of herself, I was still kind of surprised she felt comfortable doing that. Not that the tall girl wasn’t gorgeous—she was just as incredible as the rest of them—but not…approachable. Like, not even the Rock would dare to whistle at her, if you know what I mean. Except of course the Rock is a gentleman and wouldn’t whistle at a girl anyway, but whatever. The honey blonde girl caught me looking, and the way her eyes narrowed made me turn straight ahead and punch the gas. The truck didn’t go any faster, the engine just grumbled louder.

The Thriftway was not far from the school, just a few streets south, off the highway. It was nice to be inside the supermarket; it felt normal. I did the shopping at home, and I fell into the pattern of the familiar task gladly. The store was big enough inside that I couldn't hear the tapping of the rain on the roof to remind me where I was.

When I got home, I unloaded all the groceries, reorganizing the cupboards till everything was in a place that made sense. Charlie’s system was kind of haphazard. I hoped she wouldn't mind. But she hadn’t changed the way I arranged the medicine cabinet last night so I figured she would be fine with it. Once I was satisfied with the organization, I worked on the prep for dinner.

I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them in the oven to bake, covered a steak in marinade and balanced it on top of a carton of eggs in the fridge. When I was finished with that, I took my book bag upstairs. Before starting my homework, I changed into a pair of dry sweats, pulled my damp hair up into a pony-tail, and fired up the old computer in my room for the first time. It took a minute to wheeze to life and then I had to wait for a connection. Once I was finally online, three messages showed up in my inbox.

"Bella," my mom wrote…

Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi. Mom.

I sighed and went to the next. It was sent eight hours after the first.

"Bella," she wrote…

Why haven't you e-mailed me yet? What are you waiting for? Mom.

The last was from this morning.

Isabella Swan, If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie.

I checked the clock. I still had an hour, but my mom was well known for jumping the gun.

Mom,   
Calm down. I'm writing right now. Don't do anything crazy.   
Bella.

I sent that, and then started the next, beginning with a lie.

Everything is great. Of course it's raining. I was waiting for something to write about. School isn't bad, just a little repetitive. I met some nice kids who sit by me at lunch.   
Your blouse is at the dry cleaners - you were supposed to pick it up Friday.   
Charlie bought me a truck, can you believe it? I love it. It's old, but really sturdy, which is good, you know, for me.   
I miss you, too. I'll write again soon, but I'm not going to check my e-mail every five minutes. Relax, breathe. I love you.   
Bella.

I had decided to read Wuthering Heights — the novel we were currently studying in English — yet again for the fun of it, and that's what I was doing when Charlie came home. I'd lost track of the time, and I hurried downstairs to take the potatoes out and put the steak in to broil.

"Bella?" she called out when she heard me on the stairs.

 

 _Who else?_ I thought to myself.

"Hey, Ma, welcome home."

"Thanks." She hung up her gun belt and stepped out of her boots as I bustled about the kitchen. As far as I was aware, she'd never shot the gun on the job. But she kept it ready. When I came here as a child, she would always remove the bullets as soon as she walked in the door. I guess she considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.

"What's for dinner?" she asked warily. My mother was an imaginative cook, when she bothered, and her experiments weren't always edible. I was surprised, and sad, that Charlie seemed to remember that far back.

"Steak and potatoes," I answered, and she looked relieved.

She seemed to feel awkward standing in the kitchen doing nothing; she lumbered into the living room to watch TV while I worked. We were both more comfortable that way. I made a salad while the steaks cooked, and set the table.

I called her in when dinner was ready, and she sniffed appreciatively as she walked into the room.

"Smells good, Bell."

"Thanks."

We ate in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't uncomfortable. Neither of us was bothered by the quiet. In some ways, we were well suited for living together.

"So, how did you like school? Have you made any friends?" she asked as she was taking seconds.

"Well, I have a few classes with a girl named Jessica. I sit with her friends at lunch. And there's this other girl, McKayla, who's very friendly. Everybody seems pretty nice." With one outstanding exception.

"That must be McKayla Newton. Nice kid — nice family. Her dad owns the sporting goods store just outside of town. He makes a good living off all the backpackers who come through here."

We ate in silence for a minute.

"Do you know the Cullen family?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Dr. Cullen's family? Sure. Dr. Cullen's a great lady."

"They… the kids… are a little different. They don't seem to fit in very well at school."

I was surprised to see Charlie’s face get red, the way it does when she’s angry.

"People in this town," she muttered. "Dr. Cullen is a brilliant surgeon who could probably work in any hospital in the world, make ten times the salary she gets here," she continued, getting louder. "We're lucky to have her — lucky that her wife wanted to live in a small town. She’s an asset to the community, and all of those kids are well behaved and polite. I had my doubts, when they first moved in, with all those adopted teenagers. I thought we might have some problems with them. But they're all very mature — I haven't had one speck of trouble from any of them. That's more than I can say for the children of some folks who have lived in this town for generations. And they stick together the way a family should — camping trips every other weekend… Just because they're newcomers, people have to talk."

It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Charlie make. He must feel strongly about whatever people were saying.

I backpedaled. "They seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves. They're all very attractive," I added, trying to be more complimentary.

"You should see the doctor," Charlie said, laughing. "It's a good thing she's happily married. A lot of the nurses at the hospital have a hard time concentrating on their work with her around."

We lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. She cleared the table while I started on the dishes. She went back to the TV, and after I finished washing the dishes by hand — no dishwasher — I went upstairs unhappily to work on my math homework. I could feel a tradition in the making.

That night it was finally quiet. I fell asleep quickly after checking the windows and doors, exhausted.

The rest of the week was uneventful. I got used to the routine of my classes. By Friday I was able to recognize, if not name, almost all the kids at school. In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.

Edythe Cullen didn't come back to school.

Every day, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens entered the cafeteria without her. Then I could relax and join in the lunchtime conversation. Mostly it centered around a trip to the La Push Ocean Park in two weeks that McKayla was putting together. I was invited, and I had agreed to go, more out of politeness than desire. Beaches should be hot and, aside from the ocean, dry.

By Friday I was perfectly comfortable entering my Biology class, no longer worried that Edythe would be there. For all I knew, she had dropped out of school. I tried not to think about her, but I couldn't totally suppress the worry that I was responsible for her continued absence, ridiculous as it seemed.

My first weekend in Forks passed without incident. Charlie, unused to spending time in the usually empty house, worked most of the weekend. I cleaned the house, got ahead on my homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful e-mail. I did drive to the library Saturday, but it was so poorly stocked that I didn't bother to get a card; I would have to make a date to visit Olympia or Seattle soon and find a good bookstore. I wondered idly what kind of gas mileage the truck got… and shuddered at the thought.

The rain stayed soft over the weekend, quiet, so I was able to sleep well.

People greeted me in the parking lot Monday morning. I didn't know all their names, but I waved back and smiled at everyone. It was colder this morning, but at least is wasn’t raining. In English, McKayla took her now-normal seat by my side. We had a pop quiz on _Wuthering Heights_. It was straightforward, very easy.

All in all, I was feeling a lot more comfortable than I had thought I would feel by this point. More comfortable than I had ever expected to feel here.

When we walked out of class, the air was full of swirling bits of white. I could hear people shouting excitedly to each other. The wind bit at my cheeks, my nose.

"Wow," McKayla said. "It's snowing."

I looked at the little cotton fluffs that were building up along the sidewalk and swirling erratically past my face.

"Ew." Snow. There went my good day.

She looked surprised. "Don't you like snow?"

"No. That means it's too cold for rain." Obviously. "Besides, I thought it was supposed to come down in flakes — you know, each one unique and all that. These just look like the ends of Q-tips."

"Haven't you ever seen snow fall before?" she asked incredulously.

"Sure I have." I paused. "On TV."

McKayla laughed. And then a big, squishy ball of dripping snow smacked into the back of her head. We both turned to see where it came from. I had my suspicions about Erica, who was walking away, her back toward us — in the wrong direction for her next class. McKayla apparently had the same notion. She bent over and began scraping together a pile of the white mush.

"I'll see you at lunch, okay?" I kept walking as I spoke. The last thing I wanted was a wad of dirty ice melting down my neck the rest of the day. "Once people start throwing wet stuff, I go inside."

She just nodded, her eyes on Erica's retreating back.

Throughout the morning, everyone chattered excitedly about the snow; apparently it was the first snowfall of the New Year. I kept my mouth shut. Sure, it was drier than rain — until it melted in your socks. I walked alertly to the cafeteria with Jessica after Spanish. Mush balls were flying everywhere. I kept a binder in my hands, ready to use it as a shield if necessary. Jessica thought I was hilarious, but something in my expression kept her from lobbing a snowball at me herself.

McKayla caught up to us as we walked in the doors, laughing, her usually sleek hair turning frizzy from the wet. She and Jessica were talking animatedly about the snow fight as we got in line to buy food. I glanced toward that table in the corner out of habit. And then I froze where I stood. There were five people at the table.

Jessica pulled on my arm.

"Hello? Bella? What do you want?"

I looked down; my ears were hot. I had no reason to feel self-conscious, I reminded myself. I hadn't done anything wrong.

"What's with Bella?" McKayla asked Jessica.

"Nothing," I answered. I grabbed a soda bottle as I caught up to the end of the line.

"Aren't you hungry?" Jessica asked.

"Actually, I feel a little sick," I said, my eyes still on the floor.

I waited for them to get their food, and then followed them to a table, my eyes on my feet.

I sipped my soda slowly, my stomach churning. Twice McKayla asked, with unnecessary concern, how I was feeling. I told her it was nothing, but I was wondering if I _should_ play it up and escape to the nurse's office for the next hour.

Ridiculous. I shouldn't have to run away. Why was I being such a coward? Was it so bad to be glared at? It wasn’t like she was actually going to stab a knife in me.

 I decided to permit myself one glance at the Cullen family's table, just to read the mood.

 I kept my head down and glanced up under my lashes. None of them were looking this way. I lifted my head a little.

They were laughing. Edythe, Jessamine, and Eleanor all had their hair entirely saturated with melting snow. Alice and Rosalie were leaning away as Eleanor flipped her dripping hair toward them, leaving a wide arc of splatters across the front of their jackets. They were enjoying the snowy day, just like everyone else — only they looked more like a scene from a movie than the rest of us.

But, aside from the laughter and playfulness, there was something different, and I couldn't quite pinpoint what that difference was. I examined Edythe the most carefully, comparing her to my memory of last week. Her skin was less pale, I decided — flushed from the snow fight maybe — the circles under her eyes much less noticeable. Her hair was darker, wet and slicked down against her head. But there was something else. I pondered, staring, trying to isolate the change.

"Bella, what are you staring at?" Jessica intruded, her eyes following my stare.

At that precise moment, Edythe’s eyes flashed over to meet mine.

I dropped my head, letting my hair fall to conceal my face. I was sure, though, in the instant our eyes met, that she didn't look harsh or unfriendly as she had the last time I'd seen her. She just looked curious again, unsatisfied in some way.

"Edythe Cullen is staring at you," Jessica giggled in my ear.

"She doesn't look angry, does she?" I couldn't help asking.

"No," she said, sounding confused by my question. "Should she be?" Then she suddenly smiled. “What did you do, ask her out?”

“No! I’ve never even talked to her. I don't think she likes me," I confided. I still felt queasy. I put my head down on my arm, but the back of my neck had goose bumps, like I could feel her eyes on me.

"The Cullens don't like anybody… well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them. But she's still staring at you."

"Stop looking at her," I hissed.

She snickered, but she looked away.

I raised my head enough to make sure that she did, contemplating violence if she resisted. McKayla interrupted us then — she was planning an epic battle of the blizzard in the parking lot after school and wanted us to join. Jessica agreed enthusiastically. The way she looked at McKayla left little doubt that she would be up for anything she suggested. I kept silent. I would have to hide in the gym until the parking lot cleared.

For the rest of the lunch hour I very carefully kept my eyes at my own table. Edyth didn’t look like she was planning to visciously murder me anymore, so there was no reason for me to skip Biology. My stomach did frightened little flips at the thought of sitting next to her again.

I didn't really want to walk to class with McKayla as usual — she seemed to be a popular target for the snowball snipers — but when we went to the door, everyone besides me groaned in unison. It was raining, washing all traces of the snow away in clear, icy ribbons down the side of the walkway. I pulled my hood up, hiding my smile. I would be free to go straight home after Gym.

McKayla kept up a string of complaints on the way to building four.

Once inside the classroom, I was relieved that Edythe’s chair was still empty. It gave me a minute to settle myself. Mr. Banner was walking around the room, distributing one microscope and box of slides to each table. Class didn't start for a few minutes, and the room buzzed with conversation. I kept my eyes away from the door, doodling idly on the cover of my notebook.

I heard very clearly when the chair next to me moved, but my eyes stayed carefully focused on the pattern I was drawing.

"Hello," said a quiet, musical voice.

I looked up, shocked that she was speaking to me. She was sitting as far away from me as the desk allowed, but her chair was angled toward me. Her hair was dripping wet, disheveled — even so, she looked like she'd just finished shooting a commercial. Her perfect face was friendly, open, a slight smile on her flawless lips. But her eyes were careful.

"My name is Edythe Cullen," she continued. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."

My mind was spinning with confusion. Had I made up the whole thing? She was perfectly polite now. I had to say something; she was waiting. But I couldn't think of anything normal to say.

"H-how do you know my name?" I stammered.

She laughed a soft, enchanting laugh. "Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."

I grimaced. I knew it was something like that.

"No," I persisted like an idiot. "I meant, why did you call me Bella?"

She seemed confused. "Do you prefer Isabella?"

"No, I like Bella," I said. "But I think Charlie — I mean my Ma — must call me Isabella behind my back — that's what everyone here seems to know me as," I tried to explain, feeling like an utter moron.

"Oh." She let it drop. I looked away awkwardly.

Thankfully, Mr. Banner started class at that moment. I tried to concentrate as he explained the lab we would be doing today. The slides in the box were out of order. Working as lab partners, we had to separate the slides of onion root tip cells into the phases of mitosis they represented and label them accordingly. We weren't supposed to use our books. In twenty minutes, he would be coming around to see who had it right.

"Get started," he commanded.

“Would you like to go first, partner?” Edythe asked. I looked up to see her smiling a dimpled smile so perfect that I could only stare at her like an idiot.

She raised her eyebrows. “Or I could start, if you wish.”

“Uh, sure, go ahead,” I sputtered.

I saw her eyes flash to my flushed cheeks. Why couldn’t my blood just stay in my veins where it belonged?

She looked away sharply, yanking the microscope to her side of the table.

She studied the first slide for a quarter of a second—maybe less.

“Prophase.”

She switched the slide for the next, then paused and looked up at me.

“Or did you want to check?” she challenged.

“No, I’m good.” I said.

She wrote the word _Prophase_ neatly on the top line of our worksheet. Even her handwriting was perfect, like she’d taken classes in penmanship or something. Did anyone still do that?

She barely glanced through the microscope at the second slide, then wrote _Anaphase_ on the next line, looping her _A_ like it was calligraphy, like she was addressing a wedding invitation. I’d had to do the invitations for my mom’s wedding. I’d printed the labels in a fancy script font that didn’t look anything as elegant as Edythe’s handwriting.

She moved the next slide into place, while I took advantage of her diverted attention to stare. So close up, you’d think I’d be able to see something—a hint of a pimple, a stray eyebrow hair, a pore, _something_ —wrong with her. But there was nothing.

Suddenly her head flipped up, eyes to the front of the class, just before Mr. Banner called out, “Miss Cullen?”

“Yes, Mr. Banner?” Edythe slid the microscope toward me as she spoke.

“Perhaps you should let Miss Swan have an opportunity to learn.”

“Of course, Mr. Banner.”

Edythe turned and gave me a _well, go ahead then_ look.

I flushed and lowered my head to look through the eyepiece. I could sense she was watching—only fair, considering how I’d been staring at her—but it made me feel awkward, like just inclining my head was a clumsy move.

At least the slide wasn’t difficult.

“Metaphase,” I said.

“Do you mind if I look?” she asked as I started to remove the slide. Her hand caught mine, to stop me, as she was speaking. Her fingers were ice cold, like she’d been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn’t why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When she touched me, it stung my hand like a low-voltage electric shock.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, pulling her hand back quickly, though she continued to reach for the microscope. I watched her, a little dazed, as she examined the slide for an even shorter time than I had.

“Metaphase,” she agreed, then slid the microscope back to me.

I tried to exchange slides, but I was flustered, and I ended up dropping both of them. One fell on the table and the other over the edge, but Edythe caught it before it could hit the ground.

“Ugh,” I exhaled, mortified. “Sorry.”

“Well, the last is not mystery, regardless,” she said. Her tone was right on the edge of laughter. Butt of the joke again.

Edythe wrote the words _Metaphase_ and _Telophase_ onto the last two lines of the worksheet. I would have written them, but her clear, elegant script intimidated me. I didn't want to spoil the page with my clumsy scrawl.

We were finished before anyone else was close. I could see McKayla and her partner comparing two slides again and again, and another group had their book open under the table.

Which left me with nothing to do but try to not look at her… unsuccessfully. I glanced over, and she was staring at me, that same inexplicable look of frustration in her eyes. Suddenly I identified that elusive difference in her face.

"Did you get contacts?" I blurted out.

She seemed puzzled by my unexpected question. "No."

"Oh," I mumbled. "I thought there was something different about your eyes."

She shrugged, and looked away.

In fact, I _knew_ there was something different. I had not forgotten one detail of that first time she’d glared at me like she wanted me dead. I vividly remembered the flat black color of her eyes— so jarring against the background of her pale skin and her auburn hair. Today, her eyes were a completely different color: a strange gold, darker than butterscotch, but with the same warm tone. I didn't understand how that could be, unless she was lying for some reason about the contacts. Or maybe Forks was making me crazy in the literal sense of the word.

I looked down. Her hands were clenched into hard fists again.

Mr. Banner came to our table then, to see why we weren't working. He looked over our shoulders to glance at the completed lab, and then stared more intently to check the answers.

"So, Edythe…" Mr. Banner began.

“Bella identified half of the slides,” Edythe said before Mr. Banner could finish.

Mr. Banner looked at me now; his expression was skeptical.

"Have you done this lab before?" he asked.

I smiled sheepishly. "Not with onion root."

"Whitefish blastula?"

"Yeah."

Mr. Banner nodded. "Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"

"Yes."

"Well," he said after a moment, "I guess it's good you two are lab partners." He mumbled something else I couldn’t hear as he walked away. After he left, I began doodling on my notebook again.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" Edythe asked. I had the odd feeling that she was forcing herself to make small talk with me. It was like she had heard my conversation with Jessica at lunch and was trying to prove me wrong. Which was impossible. I was turning paranoid as well as obsessive.

"Not really," I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else. I was still trying to dislodge the stupid feeling of suspicion, and I couldn't concentrate on putting up a socially acceptable front.

"You don't like the cold." It wasn't a question.

"Or the wet."

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live," she mused.

"You have no idea," I muttered darkly.

She looked fascinated by what I said, for some reason I couldn't imagine. Her face was such a distraction that I tried not to look at it any more than courtesy absolutely demanded.

"Why did you come here, then?"

No one had asked me that — not straight out like she did, demanding.

"It's… complicated."

"I think I can keep up," she pressed.

I paused for a long moment, and then made the mistake of meeting her gaze. Her dark gold eyes confused me, and I answered without thinking.

"My mother got remarried," I said.

"That doesn't sound so complex," she disagreed, but her tone was suddenly softer. "When did that happen?"

"Last September." My voice sounded sad, even to me.

"And you don't like him," Edythe surmised, her tone still kind.

"No, Phil is fine. Too young, maybe, but nice enough."

"Why didn't you stay with them?"

I couldn't fathom her interest, but she continued to stare at me with penetrating eyes, as if my dull life's story was somehow vitally important.

"Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living." I half-smiled.

"Have I heard of him?" she asked, smiling in response, just enough for a hint of the dimples to show.

"Probably not. He doesn't play _well_. Strictly minor league. He moves around a lot."

"And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him." She said it as an assumption again, not a question.

My chin raised a fraction. "No, she did not send me here. I sent myself."

Her eyebrows knit together. "I don't understand," she admitted, and she seemed more frustrated by that fact than she really should be.

I sighed. Why was I explaining this to her? She continued to stare at me with obvious curiosity.

"She stayed with me at first, but she missed him. It made her unhappy… so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie." My voice was glum by the time I finished.

"But now you're unhappy," she pointed out.

"And?" I challenged.

"That doesn't seem fair." She shrugged, but her eyes were still intense.

I laughed without humor. "Haven’t you heard? Life isn't fair."

"I believe I _have_ heard that somewhere before," she agreed dryly.

"So that's all," I insisted, wondering why she was still staring at me that way.

Her head titled to the side, and her gold eyes seemed to laser right through the surface of my skin. "You put on a good show," she said slowly. "But I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see."

I grimaced at her. “I reapeat…And?”

“I don’t entirely understand you, that’s all.”

I frowned. “Why would you want to?”

"That's a very good question," she muttered, so quietly that I wondered if she was talking to herself. However, after a few seconds of silence, I decided that was the only answer I was going to get.

It was awkward, just looking at each other, but she didn’t look away. I wanted to keep staring at her face, but I was afraid she was wondering what was wrong with me for staring so much, so finally I turned toward the blackboard. She sighed.

I glanced back, and she was still looking at me, but her expression was different, a little frustrated, or irritated.

"Um…Am I annoying you?"

She shook her head and smiled with half her mouth so that one dimple popped out. “No, if anything I’m annoyed with myself.”

“Why?”

She cocked her head to the side again. “Reading people…it usually comes very easily to me. But I can’t—I guess I don’t know quite what to make of you. Is that funny?”

I flattened out my grin. "More…unexpected. My mom always calls me her open book. According to her, you can all but read my thoughts printing out across my forehead."  

Her smile vanished and she half-glared into my eyes, not angry like before, just intense, as if she was trying hard to read that printout my mom had seen. Then, switching gears just as abruptly, she was smiling again.

“I suppose I’ve gotten overconfident.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Um, ok?”

She laughed, and the sound was like music, though I couldn’t think of the instrument to compare it to. Her teeth were perfect, no surprise there, and blinding white.

Mr. Banner called the class to order then, and I turned with relief to listen. It was a little too intense, making small talk with Edythe. I felt dizzy in a strange way. Had I really just detailed my boring life to this bizarre, beautiful girl who may or may not despise me? She'd seemed engrossed in our conversation, but now I could see, from the corner of my eye, that she was leaning away from me again, her hands gripping the edge of the table with unmistakable tension.

I tried to appear attentive as Mr. Banner illustrated, with transparencies on the overhead projector, what I had seen without difficulty through the microscope. But my thoughts were unmanageable.

When the bell finally rang, Edythe rushed as swiftly and as gracefully from the room as she had last Monday. And, like last Monday, I stared after her in amazement.

McKayla skipped quickly to my side and picked up my books for me. I imagined her with a wagging tail.

"That was awful," she groaned. "They all looked exactly the same. You're lucky you had Cullen for a partner."

"I didn't have any trouble with it," I said, stung by her assumption. I regretted the snub instantly. "I've done the lab before, though," I added before she could get her feelings hurt.

"Edythe seemed friendly enough today," she commented as we shrugged into our raincoats. She didn't seem pleased about it.

I tried to sound indifferent. "I wonder what was with her last Monday."

I couldn't concentrate on McKayla's chatter as we walked to Gym, and P.E. didn't do much to hold my attention, either. McKayla was on my team today. She chivalrously covered my position as well as her own, so my woolgathering was only interrupted when it was my turn to serve; my team ducked warily out of the way every time I was up.

The rain was just a mist as I walked to the parking lot, but I was happier when I was in the dry cab. I got the heater running, for once not caring about the mind-numbing roar of the engine.

I unzipped my jacket, put the hood down, and fluffed my damp hair out so the heater could dry it on the way home. I looked around me to make sure it was clear. That's when I noticed the still, white figure. Edythe Cullen was leaning against the front door of the Volvo, three cars down from me, and staring intently in my direction. The smile was gone, but at least so was the murder, for now anyway. I swiftly looked away and threw the truck into reverse, almost hitting a rusty Toyota Corolla in my haste. Lucky for the Toyota, I stomped on the brake in time. It was just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of. I took a deep breath, still looking out the other side of my car, and cautiously pulled out again, with greater success. I stared straight ahead as I passed the Volvo, but from a peripheral peek, I would swear I saw her laughing.


	4. Phenomenon

 

When I opened my eyes in the morning, something was different.

It was the light. It was still the gray-green light of a cloudy day in the forest, but it was clearer somehow. I realized there was no fog veiling my window.

I jumped up to look outside, checking the latch on reflex, and then groaned in horror.

A fine layer of snow covered the yard, dusted the top of my truck, and whitened the road. But that wasn't the worst part. All the rain from yesterday had frozen solid - coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway a deadly ice slick. I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry; it might be safer for me to go back to bed now.

Charlie had left for work before I got downstairs. In a lot of ways, living with Charlie was like having my own place, and I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely.

I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice from the carton. I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edythe Cullen. And that was very, very stupid.

Maybe a few of the other girls were intrigued by the novelty of the new girl, but Edythe wasn’t a McKayla or an Erica. I was well aware that my league and her league were spheres that did not touch. I was already worried that just looking at her face was giving me unrealistic expectations that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Spending more time looking at her—watching her lips move, marveling at her skin, listening to her voice—was certainly not going to help with that. I should be avoiding her entirely after my brainless and embarrassing babbling yesterday. And I was suspicious of her; why should he lie about her eyes? I was still frightened of the hostility I sometimes felt emanating from her. So I shouldn't be at all anxious to see her again.

It took every ounce of my concentration to make it down the icy brick driveway alive. I almost lost my balance when I finally got to the truck, but I managed to cling to the side mirror and save myself. Clearly, today was going to be nightmarish.

Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Edythe Cullen by thinking about McKayla and Erica, and the obvious difference in how girls responded to me here. I was sure I looked exactly the same as I had in Phoenix. Maybe it was just that the kids back home had watched me pass slowly through all the awkward phases of adolescence and still thought of me that way. Perhaps it was because I was a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between. Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress. Whatever the reason, McKayla's puppy dog behavior and Erica's apparent rivalry with her were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored.

My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. I drove very slowly, though, not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street.

When I got out of my truck at school, I saw why I'd had so little trouble. Something silver caught my eye as I was slowly making my way around the truck to check my parking and the lock on the passenger door. I walked to the back of the truck - carefully holding the side for support - to examine my tires. There were thin chains crisscrossed in diamond shapes around them. Charlie had gotten up who knows how early to put snow chains on my truck. My throat suddenly felt tight. I wasn't used to being taken care of, and Charlie's unspoken concern caught me by surprise. It made me feel upside down in a strange way.

I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on, when I heard an odd sound.

It was a high-pitched screech, and almost as soon as I registered it, the sound was already painfully loud. I looked up, startled.

I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work much faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.

Edythe Cullen was standing four cars down from me, mouth open in horror. Her face stood out from a sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.

Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground. I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to. But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly around the end of the truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me _again_.

“Come on!” She said the words so quickly I almost missed them, but the voice was impossible not to recognize.

Two thin, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, her pale hands fitting exactly into a deep dent in the side of the van's body.

Then her hands moved so fast they blurred. One was suddenly gripping under the body of the van, and something was dragging me, swinging my legs around like a rag doll's, till they hit the tire of the tan car. A groaning metallic thud hurt my ears, and the van settled, glass popping, onto the asphalt - exactly where, a second ago, my legs had been.

It was absolutely silent for one long second before the screaming began. In the abrupt bedlam, I could hear more than one person shouting my name. But more clearly than all the yelling, I could hear Edythe Cullen's low, frantic voice in my ear.

"Bella? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." My voice sounded strange. I tried to sit up, and realized she was holding me against the side of her body in an iron grasp. I must have been more traumatized than I realized, because I couldn’t budge her arm at all. Was I weak with shock?

"Be careful," she warned as I struggled. "I think you hit your head pretty hard."

I became aware of a throbbing ache centered above my left ear.

"Ow," I said, surprised.

"That's what I thought." Nothing seemed funny to me, but it sounded like she was trying not to laugh.

"How in the..." I trailed off, trying to clear my head, get my bearings. "How did you get over here so fast?"

"I was standing right next to you, Bella," she said, her tone serious again.

I turned to sit up, and this time she helped me, releasing her hold around my waist and sliding as far from me as she could in the limited space. I looked at her concerned, innocent expression and was disoriented again by the force of her gold-colored eyes. What was I asking her?

And then they found us, a crowd of people with tears streaming down their faces, shouting at each other, shouting at us.

"Don't move," someone instructed.

"Get Tayler out of the van!" someone else shouted.

There was a flurry of activity around us. I tried to get up, but Edythe's cold hand pushed my shoulder down.

"Just stay put for now."

"But it's cold," I complained. It surprised me when she chuckled under her breath. There was an edge to the sound.

"You were over there," I suddenly remembered, and her chuckle stopped short. "You were by your car."

Her expression hardened abruptly. "No, I wasn't."

"I saw you." All around us was chaos. I could hear the lower voices of adults arriving on the scene. But I stubbornly held on to our argument; I was right, and she was going to admit it.

"Bella, I was standing with you, and I pulled you out of the way."

She stared at me, and something strange happened. It was like the gold of her eyes turned up, like her eyes were drugging me, hypnotizing me. It was devastating in a weird, exciting way. But her expression was anxious. I thought she was trying to communicate something crucial.

"No." I set my jaw.

The gold in her eyes blazed. "Please, Bella."

"Why?" I demanded.

"Trust me," she pleaded, her soft voice overwhelming.

I could hear the sirens now. "Will you promise to explain everything to me later?"

"Fine," she snapped, suddenly exasperated.

"Fine," I repeated angrily, unable to process her mood swings with everything else I was trying to come to terms with. What was I supposed to thing, when what I remembered was impossible?

It took six EMTs and two teachers - Mr. Varner and Coach Clapp - to shift the van far enough away from us to bring the stretchers in. Edythe vehemently refused hers, and I tried to do the same, but the traitor told them I'd hit my head and probably had a concussion. I almost died of humiliation when they put on the neck brace. It looked like the entire school was there, watching soberly as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance. Edythe got to ride in the front. It was a thousand times more humiliating than I’d imagined today would be, and I hadn’t even made it to the sidewalk.

To make matters worse, Chief Swan arrived before they could get me safely away.

"Bella!" she yelled in panic when she recognized me on the stretcher.

"I'm completely fine, Char - Ma," I sighed. "There's nothing wrong with me."

She turned to the closest EMT for a second opinion. I tuned her out to consider the jumble of inexplicable images churning chaotically in my head. When they'd lifted me away from the car, I had seen the deep dent in the tan car's bumper - a very distinct dent that fit the slim shape of Edythe's shoulders... as if she had braced herself against the car with enough force to damage the metal frame...

And then there was her family, looking on from the distance, with expressions that ranged from disapproval (Eleanor) to fury (Rosalie) but held no hint of concern for their little sister's safety.

I remembered the sensation of almost flying through the air…that hard mass that had pinned me to the ground…Edythe’s hand under the frame of the van, like it was holding the van off the ground…

I tried to think of a logical solution that could explain what I had just seen - a solution that excluded the assumption that I was insane. I didn’t feel crazy, not the way I did when I was acting out a compulsion, but maybe psychotic people felt perfectly sane.

Naturally, the ambulance got a police escort to the county hospital. I felt ridiculous the whole time they were unloading me. What made it worse was that Edythe simply glided through the hospital doors under her own power. I ground my teeth together.

They put me in the emergency room, a long room with a line of beds separated by pastel-patterned curtains. A nurse put a pressure cuff on my arm and a thermometer under my tongue. Since no one bothered pulling the curtain around to give me some privacy, I decided I wasn't obligated to wear the stupid-looking neck brace anymore. When the nurse walked away, I quickly unfastened the Velcro and threw it under the bed.

There was another flurry of hospital personnel, another stretcher brought to the bed next to me. I recognized Tayler Crowley from my Government class beneath the bloodstained bandages wrapped tightly around her head. Tyler looked a hundred times worse than I felt. But she was staring anxiously at me.

"Bella, I'm so sorry!"

"I'm fine, Tayler - you look awful, are you all right?" As we spoke, nurses began unwinding her soiled bandages, exposing a myriad of shallow slices all over her forehead and left cheek.

She ignored me. "I thought I was going to kill you! I was going too fast, and I hit the ice wrong..." She winced as one nurse started dabbing at her face.

"Don't worry about it; you missed me."

"How did you get out of the way so fast? You were there, and then you were gone..."

"Umm... Edythe pulled me out of the way."

She looked confused. "Who?"

"Edythe Cullen - she was standing next to me." I'd always been a terrible liar; I didn't sound convincing at all.

"Edythe? I didn't see her... wow, it was all so fast, I guess. Is she okay?"

"I think so. She's here somewhere, but they didn't make her use a stretcher."

I knew I wasn't crazy. What had happened? There was no way to explain away what I'd seen.

They wheeled me away then, to X-ray my head. I told them there was nothing wrong, and I was right. Not even a concussion. I asked if I could leave, but the nurse said I had to talk to a doctor first. So I was trapped in the ER, waiting, harassed by Tayler's constant apologies and promises to make it up to me. No matter how many times I tried to convince her I was fine, she continued to torment herself. Finally, I closed my eyes and ignored her. She kept up a remorseful mumbling.

"Is she sleeping?" a musical voice asked. My eyes flew open.

Edythe was standing at the foot of my bed, smirking. I glared at her. It wasn't easy - it would have been more natural to ogle. She didn’t look like someone who could stop attacking vehicles with her bare hands. But then, she also didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before.

"Hey, Edythe, I'm really sorry -" Tayler began.

Edythe lifted a hand to stop her.

"No blood, no foul," she said, flashing her brilliant teeth. She moved to sit on the edge of Tayler's bed, facing me. She smirked again.

"So, what's the verdict?" she asked me.

"There's nothing wrong with me at all, but they won't let me go," I complained. "How come you aren't strapped to a gurney like the rest of us?"

"It's all about who you know," she answered. "But don't worry, I came to spring you."

Then a doctor walked around the corner, and my mouth fell open. She was young, she was blonde... and she was more beautiful than any movie star I'd ever seen. Like someone sliced up Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Marilyn Monroe, took the best parts, and glued them together to form one goddess. She was pale, though, and tired-looking, with circles under her dark eyes. From Charlie's description, this had to be Edythe's mom.

"So, Miss Swan," Dr. Cullen said in a remarkably appealing voice, "how are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I said, for the last time, I hoped.

She walked to the lightboard on the wall over my head, and turned it on.

"Your X-rays look good," she said. "Does your head hurt? Edythe said you hit it pretty hard."

"It's fine," I repeated with a sigh, throwing a quick scowl toward Edythe. She avoided my eyes.

The doctor's cool fingers probed lightly along my skull. She noticed when I winced.

"Tender?" she asked.

"Not really." I'd had worse.

I heard a chuckle, and looked over to see Edythe's smiling. My eyes narrowed.

"Well, your mother is in the waiting room - you can go home with her now. But come back if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyesight at all."

"Can't I go back to school?" I asked, imagining Charlie trying to be attentive.

"Maybe you should take it easy today."

I glanced at Edythe. "Does she get to go to school?"

"Someone has to spread the good news that we survived," Edythe said smugly.

"Actually," Dr. Cullen corrected, "most of the school seems to be in the waiting room."

"Oh no," I moaned, covering my face with my hands.

Dr. Cullen raised her eyebrows. "Do you want to stay?"

"No, no!" I insisted, throwing my legs over the side of the bed and hopping down quickly. Too quickly - I staggered, and Dr. Cullen caught me. She looked concerned.

"I'm fine," I assured her again. No need to tell her my balance problems had nothing to do with hitting my head.

"Take some Motrin for the pain," she suggested as she steadied me.

I shifted on my feet and glanced sideways at where Edythe was still sitting on the edge of Taylor’s bed. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Um…can I take that with sertraline?”

Dr. Cullen shook her head. “Better stick with Tylenol instead. Any acetaminophen should be safe.”

"Well it doesn't hurt that bad anyway," I insisted.

"It sounds like you were extremely lucky," Dr. Cullen said, smiling as she signed my chart with a flourish.

"Lucky Edythe happened to be standing next to me," I amended with a hard glance at the subject of my statement.

"Oh, well, yes," Dr. Cullen agreed, suddenly occupied with the papers in front of her. Then she looked away, at Tayler, and walked to the next bed. My intuition flickered; the doctor was in on it.

"I'm afraid that you'll have to stay with us just a little bit longer," she said to Tayler, and began checking her cuts.

As soon as the doctor's back was turned, I moved to Edythe's side.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" I hissed under my breath. She took a step back from me, her jaw suddenly clenched.

"Your father is waiting for you," she said through her teeth.

I glanced at Dr. Cullen and Tayler.

"I'd like to speak with you alone, if you don't mind," I pressed.

She glared—but it wasn’t the same as that first day, not nearly as homicidal, so I just waited. After a second, she turned her back and strode down the long room. I nearly had to run to keep up. As soon as we turned the corner into a short hallway, she spun around to face me.

"What do you want?" she asked, sounding annoyed. Her eyes were cold.

Her unfriendliness intimidated me. My words came out with less severity than I'd intended. "You owe me an explanation," I reminded her.

"I saved your life - I don't owe you anything."

I flinched back from the resentment in her voice. "Why are you acting like this?"

"Bella, you hit your head, you don't know what you're talking about." Her tone was cutting.

My temper flared now, and I glared defiantly at her. "There's nothing wrong with my head."

She turned up the heat of her own glare. "What do you want from me, Bella?"

"I want to know the truth," I said. "I want to know why I'm lying for you."

"What do you _think_ happened?" she snapped.

It came out in a rush.

"All I know is that you weren't anywhere near me - Tayler didn't see you, either, so don't tell me I hit my head too hard. That van was going to crush us both - and it didn't, and your hands left dents in the side of it - and your shoulders left a dent in the other car, and you're not hurt at all - and the van should have smashed my legs, but you were holding it up..." I could hear how crazy it sounded, and I couldn't continue. I was so mad I could feel the tears coming; I tried to force them back by grinding my teeth together.

She was staring at me with wide incredulous eyes. But she couldn’t entirely hide the tension, the defensiveness.

"You think I lifted a van off you?" Her tone questioned my sanity, but it only made me more suspicious. It was like a perfectly delivered line by a skilled actor—so hard to doubt, but at the same time, the frame of the movie screen reminded you nothing was actually real.

I merely nodded once, jaw tight.

She smiled, hard and mocking. "Nobody will believe that, you know."

"I'm not going to tell anybody."

Surprise flitted across her face and the smile faded. "Then why does it matter?"

"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie - so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."

"Can't you just thank me and get over it?"

"Thank you." I waited, fuming and expectant.

"You're not going to let it go, are you?"

"No."

"In that case... I hope you enjoy disappointment."

We scowled at each other in silence. I was the first to speak, trying to keep myself focused. I was in danger of being distracted by her livid, glorious face. It was like trying to stare down a destroying angel.

“If you were going to be like this about it,” I said, “why did you even bother?”

She paused, and for a brief moment her stunning face was unexpectedly vulnerable.

"I don't know," she whispered.

And then she turned her back on me and walked away.

I was so angry, it took me a few minutes until I could move. When I could walk, I made my way slowly to the exit at the end of the hallway.

The waiting room was more unpleasant than I'd feared. It seemed like every face I knew in Forks was there, staring at me. Charlie rushed to my side; I put up my hands.

"There's nothing wrong with me," I assured her sullenly. I was still aggravated, not in the mood for chitchat.

"What did the doctor say?"

"Dr. Cullen saw me, and she said I was fine and I could go home." I sighed. McKayla and Jessica and Erica were all there, beginning to converge on us. "Let's go," I urged.

Charlie put one arm behind my back, not quite touching me, and led me to the glass doors of the exit. I waved sheepishly at my friends, hoping to convey that they didn't need to worry anymore. It was a huge relief- the first time I'd ever felt that way - to get into the cruiser.

We drove in silence. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I barely knew Charlie was there. I was positive that Edythe's defensive behavior in the hall was a confirmation of the bizarre things I still could hardly believe I'd witnessed.

When we got to the house, Charlie finally spoke.

"Um... you'll need to call Renée." She hung her head, guilty.

I was appalled. "You told Mom!"

"Sorry."

I slammed the cruiser's door a little harder than necessary on my way out.

My mom was in hysterics, of course. I had to tell her I felt fine at least thirty times before she would calm down. She begged me to come home - forgetting the fact that home was empty at the moment - but her pleas were easier to resist than I would have thought. I was consumed by the mystery Edythe presented. And more than a little obsessed by Edythe herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I wasn't as eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be.

I decided I might as well go to bed early that night. Charlie continued to watch me anxiously, and it was getting on my nerves. I stopped on my way to grab three Tylenol from the bathroom. They did help, and, as the pain eased, I drifted to sleep.

That was the first night I dreamed of Edythe Cullen.


	5. Invitations

In my dream it was very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Edythe's skin. I couldn't see her face, just her back as she walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to her; no matter how loud I called, she never turned. I got more and more frantic to get to her, until that anxiety woke me. It was the middle of the night, and the left over anxiety had me out of bed and checking the window lock and then quietly downstairs to check the door and first floor windows. When it finally passed and I crawled back into bed, I couldn't sleep again for what seemed like a very long time. After that, she was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach.

The month that followed the accident was uneasy, tense, and, at first, embarrassing.

To my dismay, I found myself the center of attention for the rest of that week. Taylor Crowley was impossible, following me around, obsessed with making amends to me somehow. I tried to convince her what I wanted more than anything else was for her to forget all about it - especially since nothing had actually happened to me - but she remained insistent. She followed me between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table. McKayla and Erica flashed more side-eye toward her than they did at each other, which made me worry that I'd gained another unwelcome fan. Like being into the new girl was the latest fad.

No one seemed concerned about Edythe, though I explained over and over that she was the hero - how she had pulled me out of the way and had nearly been crushed, too. I tried to be convincing. Jessica, McKayla, Erica, and everyone else always commented that they hadn't even seen her there till the van was pulled away.

I wondered to myself why no one else had seen her standing so far away, before she was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause - no one else was as aware of Edythe as I always was. No one else watched her the way I did. How pitiful.

Edythe was never surrounded by crowds of curious bystanders eager for her firsthand account. People avoided her as usual. The Cullens and the Hales sat at the same table as always, not eating, talking only among themselves. None of them, especially Edythe, glanced my way anymore.

When she sat next to me in class, as far from me as the table would allow, she seemed totally unaware of my presence. Only now and then, when her fists would suddenly ball up - skin stretched even whiter over the bones - did I wonder if she wasn't quite as oblivious as she seemed.

I wanted very much to talk to her, and the day after the accident I tried. The last time I'd seen her, outside the ER, we'd both been so furious. I still was angry that she wouldn't trust me with the truth, even though I was keeping my part of the bargain flawlessly. But she had in fact saved my life, no matter how she'd done it. And, overnight, the heat of my anger faded into awed gratitude.

She was already seated when I got to Biology, looking straight ahead. I sat down, expecting her to turn toward me. She showed no sign that she realized I was there.

"Hello, Edythe," I said pleasantly, to show her I was going to behave myself.

She turned her head half and inch toward me, but her eyes stayed focused on the blackboard. She gave me one little half-nod, then turned her face away from me.

And that was the last contact I'd had with her, though she was there, a foot away from me, every day. I watched her sometimes, unable to stop myself-always from a distance, though, in the cafeteria or parking lot. I watched as her golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day (then abruptly, they were honey-colored again. And the slow progression toward black would start over). But in class I gave no more notice that she existed than she showed toward me. It was miserable. And the dreams continued.

She wished she hadn’t pushed me out of the way of Taylor’s van I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Since she obviously preferred me dead, she was pretending that I was.

Despite my outright lies, the tenor of my e-mails got Renée worked up. She called a few times, worried. I tried to convince her it was just the weather that had me down.

McKayla, at least, was pleased by the obvious coolness between me and my lab partner. I could see she'd been worried that Edythe's daring rescue might have impressed me, and she was relieved that it seemed to have the opposite effect. She grew more confident, sitting on the edge of my table to talk before Biology class started, ignoring Edythe as completely as she ignored us.

The snow washed away for good after that one dangerously icy day. McKayla was disappointed she'd never gotten to stage her snowball fight, but pleased that the beach trip would soon be possible. The rain continued heavily, though, and the weeks passed.

I hadn’t really been aware of how much time was passing. Most days looked the same—gray, green, and more gray. My stepdad had always complained that Phoenix didn’t have seasons, but as far as I could tell, Forks was much worse. I had no idea spring was anywhere near appearing until I was walking to the cafeteria with Jessica one rainy morning.

“Hey, Bella?” she asked.

I wanted to hurry out of the rain, but Jessica was barely shuffling forward. I slowed my pace to match hers reluctantly.

“What’s up?”

“I was wondering if anyone’s asked you to the spring dance, or if you’ve asked anyone? It’s girls’ choice, you know.”

I felt a small thrill of terror at the thought that Jessica might be about to ask me out. I had thought we were purely friendly. “No, to both.”

“Do you want…I mean, do you think McKayla will ask you?”

I nearly sighed with relief. “I hope not,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.

She looked up at me, surprised. “Why not?”

“I don’t do dances.”

“Oh.”

We shuffled forward for a minute in silence. She was thoughtful. I was impatient to get out of the drizzle.

“Do you mind if I tell her that? I was going to ask her.”

“Okay. Cool.”

“When’s the dance again?”

We were close to the cafeteria now. She pointed to a bright yellow poster advertising the dance. Id’ never noticed it before, but it was curling around the eges and a little washed out, like it had been up for a while.

“A week from Saturday,” she said. "It will be really fun." Her attempt to convince me was halfhearted. I suspected that Jessica enjoyed my inexplicable popularity more than my actual company.

"You have fun with McKayla," I encouraged.

The next day, I was surprised that Jessica wasn't her usual gushing self in Trig and Spanish. She was silent as she walked by my side between classes, and I was afraid to ask her why. If McKayla had turned her down, I was the last person she would want to tell.

My fears were strengthened during lunch when Jessica sat as far from McKayla as possible, chatting animatedly with Erica. McKayla was unusually quiet too. She stayed quiet as she walked with me to Biology, the uncomfortable look on her face a bad sign. But she didn't broach the subject until I was in my seat and she was perched on my desk like usual. As always, I was electrically aware of Edythe sitting close enough to touch, but still as distant as if she were merely an invention of my imagination.

"So," McKayla said, looking at the floor, "Jessica asked me to the spring dance."

"That's great." I made my voice bright and enthusiastic. "You'll have a lot of fun with Jessica."

"Well..." She floundered as she examined my smile, clearly not happy with my response. "I told her I had to think about it."

"Why would you do that?" I let disapproval color my tone, though I was relieved she hadn't given her an absolute no.

Her face was bright red as she looked down again. Pity shook my resolve.

"I was wondering if... well, if you might be planning to ask me."

I paused for a moment, hating the wave of guilt that swept through me. But I saw, from the corner of my eye, Edythe's head suddenly tilt in my direction. Like she was listening to my answer, too.

It took me a little too long to respond. I still felt guilty, but mostly distracted. _Was_ Edythe listening? "McKayla, I think you should tell her yes," I said.

McKayla’s face fell. "Did you already ask someone?" Did Edythe notice how McKayla's eyes flickered in her direction?

"No," I assured her. "I'm not going to the dance at all."

"Why not?" McKayla demanded.

I didn't want to get into the safety hazards that dancing presented, so I quickly made new plans.

"I'm going to Seattle that Saturday," I explained. I needed to get out of town anyway - it was suddenly the perfect time to go.

"Can't you go some other weekend?"

"Sorry, no," I said. "So you shouldn't make Jess wait any longer - it's rude."

"Yeah, you're right," she mumbled, and she turned to walk back to her seat. I watched her shoulders slump forward, and I felt horrible. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to push the guilt and sympathy out of my head. Mr. Banner began talking. I sighed and opened my eyes.

Edythe was staring straight at me curiously, that same familiar edge of frustration even more distinct now in her black eyes.

I stared back, surprised, expecting her to look quickly away. She didn’t. Her eyes kept boring into mine, like she was trying to find something really important inside them. I continued to stare also, totally unable to break the connection, even if I wanted to. My hands started to shake.

"Miss Cullen?" the teacher called, seeking the answer to a question that I hadn't heard.

"The Krebs Cycle," Edythe answered, seeming reluctant as she turned to look at Mr. Banner.

I looked down at my book as soon as her eyes released me, trying to find my place. Cowardly as ever, I shifted my hair over my right shoulder to hide my face. I couldn't believe the rush of emotion pulsing through me - just because she'd happened to look at me for the first time in a six weeks. It wasn’t normal. At least for me. I couldn't allow her to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy.

I tried very hard not to be aware of her for the rest of the hour, and, since that was impossible, at least not to let her know that I was aware of her. When the bell rang at last, I turned my back to her to gather my things, expecting her to leave immediately as usual.

"Bella?"

Her voice shouldn't have been so familiar to me, like I’d been hearing it all my life instead of just an hour here and there a few weeks ago.

I turned slowly, not wanting to feel what I knew I _would_ feel when I looked at her too-perfect face. My expression was wary when I finally turned to her; her expression was unreadable. She didn't say anything.

"Yes?” I asked.

She just looked at me.

“Are you or are you not speaking to me again?" I finally asked, an unintentional note of petulance in my voice.

“Not,” she said, but her lips curled up into a smile, her dimples flashing.

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly through my nose, aware that I was gritting my teeth. She waited.

"Then what do you want, Edythe?" I asked, keeping my eyes closed; it was easier to talk to her coherently that way.

"I'm sorry." She sounded sincere. "I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."

I looked at her again; her expression was totally serious now.

"I don't know what you mean," I said, my voice guarded.

"It's better if we're not friends," she explained. "Trust me."

My eyes narrowed. I'd heard that before.

She seemed surprised by my reaction. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

"I guess… that it's too bad you didn't figure that out earlier. You could have saved yourself all this regret."

"Regret?" My answer seemed to have caught her off guard. "Regret for what?"

"For not just letting that stupid van crush me."

She looked completely shocked. She stared at me for a minute, wide-eyed, and when she finally spoke she almost sounded mad.

"You think I regret saving your life?" The words were quiet, just under her breath, but still pretty intense.

I glanced quickly toward the front of the room, where a couple of kids were still lingering. I caught one of them looking at us. He looked away and I turned back to Edythe.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, what else? Seems kind of obvious.”

She made the strangest sound—she exhaled through her teeth and it was like a _hiss_. She still looked mad.

"You’re an idiot." She told me.

Well, that was my limit.

I turned my head sharply away from her, clenching my jaw against all the wild accusations I wanted to hurl at her. It was bad enough that I was so fixated on this girl, bad enough that I thought about her all the time, dreamed about her every night. I didn’t need to sit here like the moron she thought I was and just stare while she insulted me. I gathered my books together, then stood and walked to the door, knowing all the while that she was probably right—I was and idiot, because I wanted to stay, even if all I go to hear was more abuse from her. I meant to sweep dramatically out of the room, but of course I caught the toe of my boot on the door jamb and dropped my books. I stood there for a moment, thinking about leaving them. Then I sighed and bent to pick them up.

Edythe was there; she'd already stacked them into a pile. She handed them to me, her face hard.

I took them without looking at her.

"Thank you," I said icily.

"You're welcome," she retorted, still just as mad as I was, sounded like.

I straightened up swiftly, turned away from her again, and stalked off to Gym without looking back.

Gym was brutal. We'd moved on to basketball. My team never passed me the ball, so that was good, but I fell down a lot. Sometimes I took people with me. Today I was worse than usual because my head was so filled with Edythe. I tried to concentrate on my feet, but she kept creeping back into my thoughts just when I really needed my balance.

It was a relief, as always, to leave. I almost ran to the truck; there were just so many people I wanted to avoid. The truck had suffered only minimal damage in the accident. I'd had to replace the taillights after the accident, but that was it. If the paint job weren’t already hopeless, maybe I would have had to do something about the new scrapes. Taylor's parents had to sell their van for parts.

I almost had a stroke when I rounded the corner and saw someone thin and small was leaning against the side of my truck. Then I realized it was just Erica. I started walking again.

"Hey, Erica," I called.

"Hi, Bella."

"What's up?" I asked as I went to unlock the door. I wasn't paying attention to the uncomfortable edge in her voice, so her next words took me by surprise.

"Uh, I was just wondering... if you would go to the spring dance with me?" Her voice broke on the last word.

I carefully inserted the car key into the lock.

“Sorry, Erica, I’m not going to the dance.”

I had to look at her then. Her face was down, her black hair hiding her eyes.

“Oh, okay.”

I recovered my composure and tried to make my smile warm. "Thank you for asking me, but I'm going to be in Seattle that day. It’s the only day I can go. So, you know, oh well. I hope it’s fun and all."

She glanced up from under her hair. "Oh," she said. "Well, maybe next time."

"Sure," I agreed, and then bit my lip. I wouldn't want her to take that too literally.

“See ya,” she said over her shoulder. She was already escaping. I waved but she didn’t see it.

I heard a low chuckle.

Edythe was walking past the front of my truck, looking straight forward, her mouth not betraying even the hint of a smile.

I froze for a second. I wasn’t prepared to be so close to her. I was used to bracing myself before Biology, but this was unexpected. She kept walking. I yanked the door open and jumped inside, slamming it loudly behind me. I revved the engine deafeningly and reversed out into the aisle. Edythe was in her car already, two spaces down, sliding out smoothly in front of me, cutting me off. She stopped there—to wait for her sisters; I could see the four of them walking this way, but still by the cafeteria. I considered taking out the rear of her shiny Volvo, but there were too many witnesses. I looked in my rearview mirror. A line was beginning to form. Directly behind me, Taylor Crowley was in her recently acquired used Sentra, waving. I was too aggravated to acknowledge her.

While I was sitting there, looking everywhere but at the driver in front of me, I heard a knock on my passenger side window. It was Taylor. I glanced back in my rearview mirror, confused. Her car was still running, the door left open. I leaned across the cab to crank the window down. It was stiff. I got it halfway down, then gave up.

"I'm sorry, Taylor, I can’t move. I’m pinned in." I was annoyed - obviously the holdup wasn't my fault.

"Oh, I know - I just wanted to ask you something while we're trapped here." She grinned.

This could not be happening.

"Will you go to the spring dance with me?" she continued.

"I'm not going to be in town, Taylor." My voice sounded a little sharp. I had to remember it wasn't her fault that McKayla and Erica had already used up my quota of patience for the day.

"Yeah, McKayla said that," she admitted.

"Then why -"

She shrugged. "I was hoping you were just letting her down easy."

Okay, it was completely her fault.

"Sorry, Taylor," I said, working to hide my irritation. I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I had with McKayla and Erica. "I really am going out of town."

"That's cool,” she said, unfazed. “We still have prom."

And before I could respond, she was walking back to her car. I could feel the shock on my face. I looked forward to see Alice, Rosalie, Eleanor, and Jessamine all sliding into the Volvo. In her rearview mirror, Edythe's eyes were on me. She was unquestionably shaking with laughter, as if she'd heard every word Taylor had said and found my surprise hilarious. My foot itched toward the gas pedal... one little bump wouldn't hurt any of them, just that glossy silver paint job. I revved the engine.

But they were all in, and Edythe was speeding away.

I drove home slowly, carefully, muttering to myself the whole way.

When I got home, I decided to make chicken enchiladas for dinner. It was a long process, and it would keep me busy for a while and I didn’t have much homework. It also forced me to concentrate on all the dicing—chicken, chilies, onions. All the while, though, I kept running through Biology class again, trying to analyze every word she’d spoken to me. What did she mean, it was better if we weren’t friends?

My stomach dropped when I realized the only thing she could have meant. She must know how obsessed I was with her—it wasn’t like I was hiding it very well. She didn’t want to lead me on…so we couldn’t even be friends…because she didn’t’ want to hurt my feelings the way I’d hurt McKayla and Erica today. (Taylor seemed fine.) Edythe didn’t want to have to feel that guilt. Because she wasn’t interested in me at all.

Which made perfect sense, obviously, because I wasn’t _interesting_.

My eyes stared to sting and tear. I blamed it on the onions. I grabbed a dish towel, ran it under the faucet, and then rubbed it across my eyes. It didn’t really help.

I was boring—I knew this about myself. And Edythe was the opposite of boring. This wasn’t about her secret, whatever it was, if I even remembered any of that insane moment clearly. At this point, I almost believed the story I’d told everyone else. It made a lot more sense than what I’d thought I’d seen.

But she didn’t need a secret to be out of my league. She was also brilliant and mysterious and perfect and beautiful. If she was, in fact, able to lift a full-sized van with one hand, it really didn’t matter. Either way, she was a fantasy and I was the very most mundane kind of reality.

Well, that was fine. I could leave her alone. I _would_ leave her alone. I would get through my self-imposed sentence here in purgatory, and then hopefully some school in the Southwest, or possibly Hawaii, would offer me a scholarship. I focused my thoughts on sunny beaches and palm trees as I finished the enchiladas and put them in the oven.

Charlie seemed suspicious when she came home and smelled the green peppers. I couldn't blame her - the closest edible Mexican food was probably in southern California. But she was a cop, even if just a small-town cop, so she was brave enough to take the first bite. She seemed to like it. It was fun to watch as she slowly began trusting me in the kitchen.

"Ma?" I asked when she was almost done.

"Yeah, Bella?"

"Um, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to Seattle for the day a week from Saturday... if that's okay?" I didn't want to ask permission - it set a bad precedent - but I felt rude, so I tacked it on at the end.

"Why?" She sounded surprised, as if she were unable to imagine something that Forks couldn't offer.

"Well, I wanted to get a few books - the library here is pretty limited - and maybe look at some clothes." I had more money than I was used to having, since, thanks to Charlie, I hadn't had to pay for a car. Not that the truck didn't cost me quite a bit in the gas department. The cold-weather clothes I’d picked up in Phoenix seemed to have been designed by people who’d never actually lived in temperatures below seventy but had once had such a climate described to them.

"That truck probably doesn't get very good gas mileage," she said, echoing my thoughts.

"I know, I'll stop in Montesano and Olympia - and Tacoma if I have to."

"Are you going all by yourself?" she asked, and I couldn't tell if she was suspicious I had a secret boyfriend or girlfriend, or just worried about car trouble.

"Yes."

"Seattle is a big city - you could get lost," she fretted.

"Ma, Phoenix is five times the size of Seattle - and I’ve got Google Maps on my phone, don't worry about it."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

I wondered if she was really that worried about me, or it she just thought all the Saturdays she left me alone were adding up to neglect. Probably worried. I was sure that, in her head, she still pictured me as a five-year-old most of the time.

"That's all right, Ma, I'll probably just be in dressing rooms all day - very boring."

"Oh, okay." The thought of sitting in clothing stores for any period of time immediately put her off.

"Thanks." I smiled at her.

"Will you be back in time for the dance?"

I just stared back at her until she got it.

It didn’t take her long. "Oh, that's right.”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t get my balance issues from Mom.

The next morning, when I pulled into the parking lot, I deliberately parked as far as possible from the silver Volvo. I would keep my distance. I wouldn’t notice her anymore. She’d have nothing to complain about from here on out.

As I slammed the truck door shut, I fumbled with my key and it fell into a puddle at my feet. As I bent to get it, a pale hand flashed out and grabbed it before I could. I jerked upright, almost smacking my head into her. Edythe Cullen was right next to me, leaning casually against my truck.

"How do you do that?" I asked in amazed irritation.

"Do what?" She held my key out as she spoke. As I reached for it, she dropped it into my palm.

"Appear out of thin air."

"Bella, it's not my fault if you are exceptionally unobservant." Her voice was quiet as usual, muted velvet, and her lips were holding back a smile. Like she thought I was hilarious.

How was I supposed to ignore her when she wouldn’t ignore me? That was what she wanted, right? Me out of her long, bronze hair? Wasn’t that what she’d said to me yesterday? We couldn’t be friends. Then why was she talking to me. Was she sadistic? Was this her idea of fun—torture the idiotic girl she could never possible care about? Would I ever run out of questions?

I scowled at her perfect face. Her eyes were light again today, a deep, golden honey color. Then I had to look down, to reassemble my now-tangled thoughts. Her feet were just a half-foot from mine, oriented toward me, unmoving. Like she was waiting for a resonse.

"Why the traffic jam last night?" I demanded, still looking away. "I thought you were supposed to be pretending I don't exist, not irritating me to death."

"Ah. That was for Taylor's sake, not mine. She was figuratively dying for her chance at you." She snickered.

"You..." I gasped. I couldn't think of a bad enough word. It felt like the heat of my anger should physically burn her, but she only seemed more amused.

"And I'm not pretending you don't exist," she continued like I hadn’t spoken.

I met her eyes again, trying hard to keep my mind focused, no matter how golden they seemed, or how long her lashed were against her pale violet lids.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I told her.

It was annoying how my thoughts seemed to explode straight through my lips when I was near her, like I had not filter at all.

The amused half-smile disappeared, and her face was suddenly guarded.

“Nothing,” she said too quickly, almost like she was lying.

"So you are trying to irritate me to death? Since Taylor's van didn't do the job?"

She stared for a second, and when she answered, her voice was cold. "Bella, you are utterly absurd.”

My palms tingled - I wanted so badly to hit something. I was surprised at myself. I was usually a nonviolent person. I must be right about the torture thing. I was just a way for her to pass time in this boring town. An easy mark. I turned my back and started to walk away.

"Wait," she called. I kept walking, sloshing angrily through the rain. But she was next to me, easily keeping pace.

"I'm sorry, that was rude," she said as we walked. I ignored her. "I'm not saying it isn't true," she continued, "but it was rude to say it, anyway."

"Why won't you leave me alone?" I grumbled.

"I wanted to ask you something, but you sidetracked me," she chuckled. She seemed to have recovered her good humor.

I sighed. "Fine then. What do you want to ask?"

"I was wondering if, a week from Saturday - you know, the day of the spring dance -"

I stopped, wheeling to look at her. “Is this _funny_ to you?”

She stared at me, seeming oblivious to the drizzling rain that was falling. She was apparently wearing no makeup at all—nothing smudged or ran. Of course, her face was just that perfect naturally.

Her eyes were wickedly amused, and the hint of dimples threatened on her cheeks. "Will you please allow me to finish?"

I bit my lip and clasped my hands together, interlocking my fingers, so I couldn't do anything rash.

"I heard you say you were going to Seattle that day, and I was wondering if you wanted a ride."

That was not what I was expecting.

"What?" I wasn't sure what she was getting at.

"Do you want a ride to Seattle?"

"With who?" I asked, mystified.

"Myself, obviously." She enunciated every syllable, like she thought maybe English wasn’t my first language.

I was still stunned. "Why?"

"Well, I was planning to go to Seattle in the next few weeks, and, to be honest, I'm not sure if your truck can make it."

Finally, I was able to start walking again, goaded by the insult to my truck.

“Make fun of me all you want, but leave the truck out of it,” I said.

She kept up easily. “Why would you think that I’m making fun of you?” she asked. “The invitation is genuine.”

“My truck is great, thanks.”

"But can your truck make it there on one tank of gas?" She matched my pace again.

"I don't see how that’s your problem." Stupid, shiny Volvo owner.

"The wasting of finite resources is everyone's problem,” she said primly.

"Honestly, Edythe." I felt a thrill go through me as I said her name, and I hated it. "I can't keep up with you. I thought you didn't want to be my friend."

"I said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."

"Oh, thanks, now that's _all_ cleared up." Heavy sarcasm. I realized I had stopped walking again. We were under the shelter of the cafeteria roof now, so I could more easily look at her rain-washed face. Which certainly didn't help my clarity of thought.

"It would be more... _prudent_ for you not to be my friend," she explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."

There was no humor in her face now. Her eyes were gloriously intense, the long lines of her lashed stark black against her skin. Her voice had a smoldering heat to it. I couldn't remember how to breathe.

"Will you go with me to Seattle?" she asked, still intense.

I couldn't speak yet, so I just nodded.

She smiled briefly, and then her face became serious.

"You really _should_ stay away from me," she warned. "I'll see you in class."

She turned abruptly and walked back the way we'd come.


	6. Blood Type

 

I made my way to English in a daze. I didn't even realize when I first walked in that class had already started.

"Thank you for joining us, Miss Swan," Mr. Mason said in a disparaging tone.

I flushed and hurried to my seat.

It wasn't till class ended that I realized McKayla wasn't sitting in her usual seat next to me. I felt a twinge of guilt. But she and Erica both met me at the door as usual, so I figured I wasn't totally unforgiven. McKayla seemed to become more herself as we walked, gaining enthusiasm as she talked about the weather report for this weekend. The rain was supposed to take a minor break, and so her beach trip would be possible. I tried to sound eager, to make up for disappointing her yesterday. It was hard; rain or no rain, it would still only be in the high forties, if we were lucky. Not my idea of a beach day.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. It was hard to believe that I wasn’t imagining things again—that Edythe really had said those words, and that her eyes had looked that way when she was saying them. Maybe it was just a very convincing dream that I'd confused with reality. First I’d thought I’d seen her stop a van barehanded, and now this. That seemed more probable than that I really appealed to her on any level. But here I was, walking into this one with eyes wide open, and I didn’t even care that the punch line was coming. At the moment, it seemed like a decent trade—her laughter later for that look in her eyes now.

So I was impatient and nervous as Jessica and I entered the cafeteria. I wanted to see her face, to see if she'd gone back to the cold, indifferent person I'd known for the last several weeks. Or if, by some miracle, I'd really heard what I thought I'd heard this morning. Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans, McKayla had accepted her invitation - Lauren and Angela had asked Tyler and Erica respectively and they were all going together. She was completely unaware of my inattention.

My eyes went straight to her table as soon as I was through the door, and then disappointment flooded through me. The other four were there, but she was absent. Had she gone home? Was she going to disappear every time something significant happened? Of course, maybe the conversation this morning was only significant to me.

I followed the still-babbling Jessica through the line, crushed. I'd lost my appetite - I bought nothing but a bottle of lemonade. I just wanted to go sit down and sulk. I wished I were the kind of person who could just go home early, the kind who didn’t worry about unexcused absences and detention and disappointed parental figures.

"Edythe Cullen is staring at you again," Jessica said, finally breaking through my abstraction with her name. "I wonder why she's sitting alone today."

My head snapped up. I followed her line of sight to see Edythe, flashing her dimples as soon as she knew I’d seen her. She raised one hand and motioned with her index finger for me to join her. As I stared in disbelief, she winked.

"Does she mean _you_?" Jessica asked with insulting astonishment in her voice.

"Maybe she needs help with her Biology homework," I muttered for her benefit. "Um, I'd better go see what she wants."

I could feel her staring after me as I walked away. I could also feel my face flushing and tried to calm myself.

When I reached her table, I stood behind the chair across from her, unsure.

"Why don't you sit with me today?" she suggested through a wide smile.

I sat down automatically, watching her with caution. She was still smiling. It was hard to believe that someone so beautiful could be real. I was afraid that she might disappear in a sudden puff of smoke, and I would wake up.

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

"This is different," I finally managed.

"Well..." She paused. I could tell there was more, so I waited. The rest of the words followed in a rush, the words blurring together so that it took me a minute to decipher the meaning. "I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly."

I kept waiting, thinking she would explain, but she didn’t. The silence got more uncomfortable as the seconds passed.

"You know I don't have any idea what you mean," I eventually pointed out.

"I’m counting on it," she said, and then her eyes focused behind me. "I think your friends are angry with me for stealing you."

"They'll survive." I could feel their stares boring into my back. For once, it didn’t bother me at all.

She ginned. "I may not give you back, though.”

I gulped audibly.

She laughed. "You look worried."

"No," I said, but, ridiculously, my voice broke. "Surprised, actually... what brought all this on?"

"I told you – I’m tired of trying to stay away from you. So I'm giving up." She was still smiling, but her eyes were serious.

"Giving up?" I repeated in confusion.

"Yes - giving up trying to be good. I'm just going to do what I want now, and let the chips fall where they may." Her smile faded as she explained, and a hard edge crept into her silky voice.

"You lost me again."

The breathtaking dimpled smile reappeared.

"I always say too much when I'm talking to you - that's one of the problems."

"Don't worry - I don't understand any of it," I said wryly.

"Like I said—I’m counting on that."

We stared at each other for a few seconds, but the quiet wasn’t awkward this time. It was more…charged. My face started to get hot again.

"So,” I said, looking away so that I could catch my breath. “In plain English, are we friends now?"

"Friends..." she murmured. She sounded like it wasn’t her favorite word.

"Or not," I muttered.

She grinned. "Well, we can try, I suppose. But I'm warning you now that I'm not a good friend for you." Behind her smile, the warning was real.

"You say that a lot," I noted. Funny how my stomach was rolling. Was it because I was hungry after all? Because she was smiling at me? Or because I suddenly almost believed her? I could tell that _she_ believed what she was saying.

"Yes, because you're not listening to me. I'm still waiting for you to believe it. If you're smart, you'll avoid me."

Then I had to smile, and I watched as her smile automatically got bigger in response. "I think you've made your opinion on the subject of my intellect clear, too."

She smiled apologetically. “I did apologize—for the second one, at least. Will you forgive me for the first? I spoke without thinking.”

“Yeah, I guess. You don’t actually have to apologize to me.”

She sighed. “Don’t I?”

I didn’t know how to answer—it sounded like a rhetorical question anyway.

"So, as long as I'm being... not smart, we'll try to be friends?" I struggled to sum up the confusing exchange.

"That sounds about right."

I looked down at my hands wrapped around the lemonade bottle, not sure what to do now. It was so strange to sit with her here—like normal people. I was sure only one of us was normal.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

I looked up. She was staring again, her gold eyes curious and—like the first time I’d seen her—frustrated. Once again, my thoughts refused to pass through the appropriate filter.

"I'm wondering what you are."

Her jaw tightened, but she kept her smile in place with some effort.

"Are you having any luck with that?" Her voice was casual, like she didn’t really care about my answer.

"Not too much," I admitted.

She chuckled. "What are your theories?"

I blushed. I had been vacillating during the last month between Clark Kent and Peter Parker. There was no way I was going to own up to that.

She tilted her head to the side, staring into my eyes as if she was trying to see _through_ them, right into my brain. She smiled—inviting this time, impossible to resist.

"Won't you tell me?"

I had to try to resist. She already thought I was an idiot. I shook my head. "Too embarrassing."

"That's _really_ frustrating, you know," she complained.

"Really?" I asked quickly, my eyes narrowing, "I can't imagine why that would be frustrating at all - just because someone refuses to tell you what they're thinking, even if all the while they're making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean... now, why would that be frustrating?"

She frowned, her lips pouting out in a distracting way. I worked to hold on to my focus.

"Or better," I continued, the pent-up annoyance flowing freely now, "say that person also did a wide range of bizarre things - from saving your life under impossible circumstances one day to treating you like a pariah the next, and she never explained any of that, either, even after she promised. Frustrating like that?”

Her frown twitched, then settled into a deeper scowl. “You’re really not over that yet?”

“Not quite.”

"You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?"

"I don't like double standards."

We stared at each other, unsmiling.

“Would another apology help?”

“An explanation would be better.”

She pursed her lips, then glanced over my shoulder, and, unexpectedly, she snickered.

"What?"

"Your girlfriend seems to think I'm being mean to you - she's debating whether or not to come break up our fight." She snickered again.

"I don't know who you're talking about," I said frostily, “and you’re trying to change the subject.”

She ignored the second half of my statement. “You might not think of her that way, but it’s how she thinks of you.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

"It is. I told you, most people are easy to read."

"Except me, of course."

"Yes. Except for you." Her mood shifted suddenly; her eyes turned brooding. "I wonder why that is."

I had to look away from the intensity of her stare. I concentrated on unscrewing the lid of my lemonade. I took a swig, staring at the table without seeing it.

"Aren't you hungry?" she asked.

Her stare was less penetrating now, I saw with relief. "No." I didn't feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full - of butterflies. "You?" I looked at the empty table in front of her.

"No, I'm not hungry." I didn't understand her expression - it looked like she was enjoying some private joke.

"Can you do me a favor?" I asked after a second of hesitation.

She was suddenly wary. "That depends on what you want."

"It's not much," I assured her.

She waited, guarded but clearly curious.

"I just wondered... if you could warn me beforehand the next time you decide to ignore me for my own good. Just so I'm prepared." I looked at the lemonade bottle as I spoke, tracing the circle of the opening with my pinkie finger.

"That sounds fair." She was pressing her lips together to keep from laughing when I looked up.

"Thanks."

"Can I have a favor in return?" she asked.

"Sure."

"Tell me one theory."

  1. "No way."



"You didn't qualify, you just promised one answer," she reminded me.

"And you've broken promises yourself," I reminded her back.

"Just one theory - I won't laugh."

"Yes, you will." I was positive about that.

She looked down, and then glanced up at me through her long thick lashes, her gold eyes scorching.

"Please?" she breathed, leaning toward me. Without permission, my body leaned closer to her, like she was a magnet and I was a paper clip, till her face was less than a foot from mine. My mind went totally blank.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, and forced myself to sit back. "Er, what?" I asked, dazed.

"Just one little theory," she purred. Her eyes still smoldered at me. “Please?”

"Um, well, bitten by a radioactive spider?" Was she a hypnotist, too? Or was I just a hopeless pushover?

"That's not very creative," she scoffed.

"I'm sorry, that's all I've got.”

"You're not even close," she teased.

"No spiders?"

"Nope."

"And no radioactivity?"

"None."

"Damn," I sighed.

"Kryptonite doesn't bother me, either," she chuckled.

"You're not supposed to laugh, remember?"

She struggled to compose her face, but her shoulders shook from holding the laughter back.

"I'll figure it out eventually," I warned her.

"I wish you wouldn't try." She was serious again, humor gone like a switch flipped off.

"How can I not wonder? I mean…you’re impossible.” I didn’t say it like a criticism, just a statement. _You are not possible. You are more than what is possible._

She understood. "What if I'm not a superhero? What if I'm the villain?" She smiled playfully, but her eyes were heavy with some burden I couldn’t imagine.

"Oh," I said, as several things she'd hinted fell suddenly into place. "I see."

She waited, suddenly rigid with stress. In that second, all of her walls seemed to disappear.

"Do you?" she asked so quietly it was almost a whisper.

I tried to order my thoughts, but her anxiety pushed me to answer faster. I said the words without preparing them first.

"You're dangerous?" It came out like a question, and there was doubt in my voice. She was not much taller than I was, no more than my age, and delicately built. Under normal circumstances, I would have laughed at applying the word _dangerous_ to someone like her. But she was not normal, and there _was_ no one like her. I remembered the first time she’d glared at me with hate in her eyes, and I’d felt genuinely afraid, though I hadn’t understood that reaction in the moment, and I’d thought it foolish just seconds later. Now I understood. Under the doubt, outside the incongruity of the word _dangerous_ applied to her slim and perfect body, I could feel the truth of the foundation. The danger was real, though my logical mind couldn’t make sense of it. And she’d been trying to warn me all along.

She just looked at me, eyes full of some emotion I couldn't comprehend.

“Dangerous,” I murmured again, trying to fit the word to the person in front of me. Her porcelain face was still vulnerable, without walls or secrets. Her eyes were wide now, anticipating my reaction. She seemed to be bracing herself for some kind of impact. “But not the villain,” I whispered. “No, I don’t believe that.”

"You're wrong." Her voice was almost inaudible. She looked down, stealing my bottle lid and then spinning it on its side between her fingers. I stared at her, wondering why I didn't feel afraid. She meant what she was saying - that was obvious. But I just felt anxious, on edge... and, more than anything else, fascinated. The same way I always felt when I was near her.

All I wanted was to sit here forever, to listen to her voice and watch the expressions fly across her face, so much faster than I could analyze them. So of course that was when I noticed that the cafeteria was almost empty.

I shoved my chair away from the table, and she looked up. She seemed sad, but resigned, like this was the reaction she’d been waiting for.

"We're going to be late,” I told her, scrambling to my feet.

She was surprised for just a second, and then the now-familiar amusement was back.

"I'm not going to class today," she said, twirling the lid so fast it was just a blur.

"Why not?"

"It's healthy to ditch class now and then." She smiled up at me, but her eyes were still troubled.

"Well, I'm going," I told her. I was far too big a coward to risk getting caught.

She turned her attention back to her makeshift top. "I'll see you later, then."

That sounded like a dismissal, which was mildly insulting. There was so much to think about though, and I didn’t do my best thinking around her anyway. The first bell sent me hurrying out the door. I glanced back once to see that she hadn’t moved at all, and the lid was still spinning in a tight circle like it would never stop.

As I half-ran to class, my head was spinning faster than the bottle cap. So few questions had been answered in comparison to how many new questions had been raised. At least the rain had stopped.

I was lucky; Mr. Banner wasn't in the room yet when I ran in late, face flushed. I settled quickly into my seat, aware that both McKayla and Angela were staring at me. McKayla looked resentful; Angela looked surprised, and slightly awed.

Mr. Banner came in the room then, calling the class to order. He was juggling a few small cardboard boxes in his arms. He put them down on McKayla's table, telling her to start passing them around the class.

"Okay, guys, I want you all to take one piece from each box," he said as she produced a pair of rubber gloves from the pocket of his lab jacket and pulled them on. The sharp sound as the gloves snapped into place against her wrists was a little ominous. "The first should be an indicator card," he went on, grabbing a white card with four squares marked on it and displaying it. "The second is a four-pronged applicator -" he held up something that looked like a nearly toothless hair pick "- and the third is a sterile micro-lancet." He held up a small piece of blue plastic and split it open. The barb was invisible from this distance, but my stomach flipped.

"I'll be coming around with a dropper of water to prepare your cards, so please don't start until I get to you." He began at McKayla's table again, carefully putting one drop of water in each of the four squares. "Then I want you to carefully prick your finger with the lancet..." He grabbed McKayla's hand and jabbed the spike into the tip of McKayla's middle finger. Oh no. Clammy moisture broke out across my forehead.

“Ouch,” McKayla complained.

My ears began a faint ringing.

"Put a small drop of blood on each of the prongs." He demonstrated, squeezing McKayla's finger till the blood flowed. I swallowed convulsively, my stomach heaving.

"And then apply it to the card," he finished, holding up the dripping red card for us to see. I closed my eyes, trying to hear through the ringing in my ears.

"The Red Cross is having a blood drive in Port Angeles next weekend, so I thought you should all know your blood type." He sounded proud of himself. "Those of you who aren't eighteen yet will need a parent's permission - I have slips at my desk."

He continued through the room with his water dropper. I put my cheek against the cool black tabletop and tried to hold on to my consciousness. All around me I could hear squeals, complaints, and giggles as my classmates skewered their fingers. I breathed slowly in and out through my mouth.

"Bella, are you all right?" Mr. Banner asked. His voice was close to my head, and it sounded alarmed.

"I already know my blood type, Mr. Banner. I’m O negative." I said in a weak voice. I was afraid to raise my head. I couldn’t open my eyes.

"Are you feeling faint?"

"Yes, sir," I muttered, internally kicking myself for not ditching when I had the chance.

"Can someone take Bella to the nurse, please?" he called.

I didn't have to look up to know that it would be McKayla who volunteered.

"Can you walk?" Mr. Banner asked.

"Yes," I whispered. _Just let me get out of here_ , I thought. _I'll crawl_.

I felt McKayla grab my hand—I was sure it was all sweaty and gross but I couldn’t care about that yet—and I worked to get my eyes open while she tugged me up. I just had to get out of this room before it went full dark. I stumbled toward the door while McKayla put her arm around my waist and pulled my arm over her shoulder. I leaned against her heavily on the way out of the classroom.

McKayla towed me slowly across campus. When we were around the edge of the cafeteria, out of sight of building four in case Mr. Banner was watching, I stopped.

"Just let me sit for a minute, please?" I begged.

She helped me sit on the edge of the walk.

"And whatever you do, keep your hand in your pocket," I warned. I was still so dizzy. I slumped over on my side, putting my cheek against the freezing, damp cement of the sidewalk, closing my eyes. That helped.

"Wow, you're green, Bella," McKayla said nervously.

“Just gimmie…a minute…”

"Bella?" a different voice called from the distance.

No! Not this too. Please let me be imagining that horribly familiar voice.

"What's wrong? Is she hurt?" Her voice was closer now, and she sounded upset. I wasn't imagining it. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to die. Or, at the very least, not to throw up.

McKayla sounded stressed. "I think she's fainted. I don't know what happened, she didn't even stick her finger."

"Bella." Edythe's voice was right beside me, relieved now. "Can you hear me?"

"No," I groaned. "Go away."

She laughed.

"I was taking her to the nurse," McKayla explained in a defensive tone, "but she wouldn't go any farther."

"I'll take her," Edythe said. I could hear the smile still in her voice. "You can go back to class."

"No," McKayla protested. "I'm supposed to do it."

Suddenly the sidewalk disappeared from beneath me. My eyes flew open in shock. Edythe had scooped me up in her arms, as easily as if I weighed ten pounds instead of a hundred and ten. She didn’t so much as stagger when my full weight settled.

Then again, I didn’t weigh as much as a van.

"Put me down!" Please, please let me not vomit on her. She was walking before I was finished talking.

"Hey!" McKayla called, already ten paces behind us.

Edythe ignored her. "You look awful," she told me, grinning.

"Put me back on the sidewalk," I moaned. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” The rocking movement of her walk was not helping.

"So you faint at the sight of blood?" she asked. Apparently, this was hilarious.

I didn't answer. I closed my eyes again and fought the nausea with all my strength, clamping my lips together. The most important thing was that I not vomit on her. I could survive everything else.

"And not even your own blood!" She laughed. It was like the sound of a bell ringing.

“I have a weak vasovagal system,” I muttered. “It’s just a neutrally mediated syncope.”

She laughed again. Apparently, the big words I’d memorized to explain these situations did not impress her the way they were supposed to.

I don't know how she opened the door while carrying me, but it was suddenly warm—everywhere except where her body was pressed against me. It was strange to like that so much—her body touching mine, even when I felt like death.

"Oh my," I heard a female voice gasp.

"She’s having a neutrally mediated syncope,” Edythe explained brightly.

I opened my eyes. I was in the office, and Edythe was striding past the front counter toward the nurse's door. Ms. Cope, the redheaded front office receptionist, ran ahead of her to hold it open. She faltered when she heard the dire-sounding diagnosis.

“Should I call 911?” she gasped.

“It’s just a fainting spell,” I mumbled.

The grandmotherly nurse looked up from a novel, astonished, as Edythe swung me into the room and placed me gently on the crackly paper that covered the brown vinyl mattress on the one cot. Then she moved to stand against the wall as far across the narrow room as possible. Her eyes were bright, excited.

"She's just a little faint," she reassured the startled nurse. "They're blood typing in Biology."

The nurse nodded sagely. "There's always one."

Edythe covered her mouth and pretended her laugh was a cough.

"Just lie down for a minute, honey; it'll pass."

"I know," I sighed. The nausea was already fading. Soon the tunnedl would shorten and things would sound normal again.

"Does this happen a lot?" she asked.

I sighed. “I have a weak vasovagal system.”

The nurse looked confused.

"Sometimes," I told her.

Edythe laughed again, not bothering to disguise it this time.

"You can go back to class now," the nurse told her.

"I'm supposed to stay with her." She said this with such assured authority that - even though she pursed her lips - the nurse didn't argue it further.

"I'll go get you some ice for your forehead, dear," she said to me, and then bustled out of the room.

"You were right," I moaned, letting my eyes close.

"I usually am - but about what in particular this time?"

"Ditching _is_ healthy." I practiced breathing evenly.

"You scared me for a minute there," she admitted after a pause. Her tone made it sound like she was confessing a humiliating weakness. "I thought that Newton girl was dragging your dead body off to bury it in the woods."

"Hilarious." I still had my eyes closed, but I was feeling more normal every minute.

"Honestly - I've seen corpses with better color. I was concerned that I might have to avenge your murder."

"Poor McKayla. I'll bet she's mad."

"She absolutely loathes me," Edythe said cheerfully.

"You can't know that," I argued, but then I wondered suddenly if she could.

"You should have seen her face. It was obvious.”

"How did you see me? I thought you were ditching." I was almost fine now, though the queasiness would probably pass faster if I'd eaten something for lunch. On the other hand, maybe it was lucky my stomach was empty.

"I was in my car, listening to a CD." Such a normal response - it surprised me.

I heard the door and opened my eyes to see the nurse with a cold compress in her hand.

"Here you go, dear." She laid it across my forehead. "You're looking better," she added.

"I think I'm fine," I said, sitting up. Just a little ringing in my ears, no spinning. The mint green walls stayed where they should.

I could see she was about to make me lie back down, but the door opened just then, and Ms. Cope stuck her head in.

"We've got another one," she warned.

I hopped down to free up the cot for the next invalid.

I handed the compress back to the nurse. "Here, I don't need this."

And then McKayla staggered through the door, now supporting a sallow-looking Lee Stephens, a boy in our Biology class. Edythe and I drew back against the wall to give them room.

"Oh no," Edythe muttered. "Go out to the office, Bella."

I looked up at her, bewildered.

"Trust me - go."

I spun and caught the door before it closed, darting out of the infirmary. I could feel Edythe right behind me.

"You actually listened to me." She said, surprised.

"I smelled the blood," I said, wrinkling my nose. Lee wasn't sick from watching other people, like me. Much less embarrassing.

"People can't smell blood," Edythe contradicted.

"Well, I can - that's what makes me sick. It smells like rust... and salt."

She was staring at me with an unfathomable expression.

"What?" I asked.

"It's nothing."

McKayla came through the door then, glancing from me to Edythe.

“Thanks so much for your help, Edythe,” she said, her sickly sweet tone a pretty good indication that Edythe was right about the loathing thing. “I don’t know what Bella would have done without you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Edythe replied with an amused smile.

"You look better," McKayla said to me in the same tone. “I’m so glad.”

"Just keep your hand in your pocket," I warned her again.

"It's not bleeding anymore," she told me, her voice going back to normal. "Are you going back to class?"

"Are you kidding? I'd just have to turn around and come back."

"Yeah, I guess... So are you going this weekend? To the beach?" While she spoke, she flashed another glare toward Edythe, who was standing against the cluttered counter, motionless as a sculpture, staring off into space.

I tried to sound as friendly as possible. "Sure, I said I was in."

"We're meeting at my dad's store, at ten." Her eyes flickered to Edythe again, wondering if she was giving out too much information. Her body language made it clear that it wasn't an open invitation.

"I'll be there," I promised.

"I'll see you in Gym, then," she said, moving uncertainly toward the door.

"See you," I replied.

She looked at me once more, her round face slightly pouting, and then as she walked slowly through the door, her shoulders slumped. A swell of sympathy washed over me. I didn’t _want_ to hurt her feelings, but it seemed like it just kept happening. I pondered seeing her disappointed face again... in Gym.

"Gym," I groaned.

"I can take care of that." I hadn't noticed Edythe moving to my side, but she spoke now in my ear, making me jump. "Go sit down and look pale," she instructed in a whisper.

That wasn't a challenge; I was always pale, and my recent swoon had left a light sheen of sweat on my face. I sat in one of the creaky folding chairs and rested my head against the wall with my eyes closed. Fainting spells always exhausted me.

I heard Edythe speaking softly at the counter.

"Ms. Cope?"

"Yes?" I hadn't heard her return to her desk.

"Bella has Gym next hour, and I don't think she feels well enough. Actually, I was thinking I should take her home now. Do you think you could excuse her from class?" Her voice was like melting honey. I could imagine how much more overwhelming her eyes would be.

"Do you need to be excused, too, Edythe?" Ms. Cope fluttered. Why couldn't I do that?

"No, I have Mrs. Goff, she won't mind."

"Okay, it's all taken care of. You feel better, Bella," she called to me. I nodded weakly, hamming it up just a bit.

"Can you walk, or do you want me to help you again?" With her back to the receptionist, her expression became sarcastic.

"I'll walk."

I stood carefully, and I was still fine. She held the door for me, her smile polite but her eyes mocking. I walked out into the cold, fine mist that had just begun to fall. It felt nice - the first time I'd enjoyed the constant moisture falling out of the sky - as it washed my face clean of the sticky perspiration.

"Thanks," I said as she followed me out. "It's almost worth getting sick to miss Gym."

"Anytime." She was staring straight forward, squinting into the rain.

"So are you going? This Saturday, I mean?" I was hoping she would, though it seemed unlikely. I couldn't picture her loading up to carpool with the rest of the kids from school; she didn't belong in the same world. But just hoping that she might gave me the first twinge of enthusiasm I'd felt for the outing.

"Where are you all going, exactly?" She was still looking ahead, expressionless.

"Down to La Push, to First Beach." I studied her face, trying to read it. Her eyes seemed to narrow infinitesimally.

She finally looked at me from the corner of her eye, smiling wryly. "I really don't think I was invited."

I sighed. "I just invited you."

"Let's you and I not push poor McKayla any further this week. We don't want her to snap." Her eyes danced; she was enjoying the idea more than she should.

"Fine, whatever,” I muttered, preoccupied by the way she'd said " _you and I_." I liked it more than I should.

We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back a half step.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked, surprised. She was gripping a fistful of my jacket in one hand. She didn’t look like she’d even planted her feet. For a second I couldn’t answer. She denied being a superhero, but my mind couldn’t seem to frame it another way. It was like Supergirl had left her cape at home.

“Home. Or am I not?” Her expression confused me.

"Didn't you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I'm going to let you drive in your condition?" Her voice a little indignant.

"What condition?”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have a weak vasovagal system.”

“I think I’ll survive,” I said. I tried to take another step toward my truck, but her hand didn’t free my jacket.

I stopped and looked back at her. “Okay, why don’t you tell me what you want me to do?”

She smiled widely. “Very sensible. You’re going to get into my car, and I’m going to drive you home.”

“I have two issues with that. Once, it’s not necessary, and two, what about my truck?”

“One, necessary is a subjective word, and two, I'll have Alice drop it off after school."

I was distracted by the casual reminder that she had siblings—strange, pale, beautiful siblings. Special siblings? Special like her?

“Are you going to put up a fuss?” she asked when I didn’t speak.

I thought briefly of slipping out of my jacket, but I knew she could probably catch me again before I got far enough away. “Is there any point in resisting?”

I tried to decipher all the layers to her smile, but I didn’t get very far. “It warms my cold heart to see you learning so quickly. This way.”

She dropped her fistful of jacket and turned. I followed her willingly. My eyes dropped to the smooth roll of her hips and I was a little confused about why they were just as hypnotic as her eyes. There wasn’t a downside to getting more time with her.

The inside of the Volvo was just as pristine as the outside. Instead of the smell of gasoline and tobacco, there was just a faint perfume. It was almost familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing.

She fiddled with the controls, turning the heater up and the music down.

"Clair de Lune?" I asked, surprised.

"You know Debussy?" She sounded surprised, too.

"Not well," I admitted. "My mother plays a lot of classical music around the house - I only know my favorites."

"It's one of my favorites, too."

“Well, imagine that,” I said. “We have something in common.”

I expected her to laugh, but she only stared out through the rain, lost in thought.

I listened to the music, relaxing against the light gray leather seat. It was impossible not to respond to the familiar, soothing melody. The rain blurred everything outside the window into gray and green smudges. I began to realize we were driving very fast; the car moved so steadily, so evenly, though, I didn't feel the speed. Only the town flashing by gave it away.

"What is your mother like?" she asked me suddenly.

I glanced over to see her studying me with curious butterscotch eyes.

"She looks a lot like me, but she's prettier," I said. She raised her eyebrows. "I have too much Charlie in me. She's more outgoing than I am, and braver. She's irresponsible and slightly eccentric, and she's a very unpredictable cook. She's my best friend." I stopped. Talking about her was making me depressed.

"How old are you, Bella?" Her voice sounded frustrated for some reason I couldn't imagine. She'd stopped the car, and I realized we were at Charlie's house already. The rain was so heavy that I could barely see the house at all. It was like the car was submerged under a river.

"I'm seventeen," I responded, a little confused.

"You don't seem seventeen."

Her tone was reproachful; it made me laugh.

"What?" she demanded.

"My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and that I get more middle-aged every year." I laughed again, and then sighed. "Well, someone has to be the adult." I paused for a second. "You don't seem much like a junior in high school yourself," I noted.

She made a face and changed the subject.

"So why did your mother marry Phil?"

I was surprised she would remember the name; I'd mentioned it just once, almost two months ago. It took me a moment to answer.

"My mother... she's very young for her age. I think Phil makes her feel even younger. At any rate, she's crazy about him." I shook my head. The attraction was a mystery to me.

"Do you approve?" she asked.

"Does it matter?" I countered. "I want her to be happy... and he is who she wants."

"That's very generous... I wonder," she mused.

"What?"

"Would she extend the same courtesy to you, do you think? No matter who your choice was?" She was suddenly intent, her eyes searching mine.

"I-I think so," I stuttered. "But she's the adult—on paper at least. It's a little bit different."

Her face relaxed. "No one too scary then," she teased.

I grinned in response. "What do you mean by scary? Multiple facial piercings and extensive tattoos?"

"That's one definition, I suppose."

"What's your definition?"

But she ignored my question and asked me another. "Do you think that I could be scary?" She raised one eyebrow, and the faint trace of a smile lightened her face.

I pretended to examine her face for a minute, just as an excuse to stare at her, my favorite thing to do. Her features were so delicate, so symmetrical. Her face would stop anyone in their tracks, but it wouldn’t make them run in the other direction. The opposite.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine that,” I admitted.

She frowned to herself.

“But I think you could be, if you wanted to."

She tilted her head and gave me an exasperated smile, but didn’t say anything else.

"So, now are you going to tell me about your family?" I asked to distract her. "It's got to be a much more interesting story than mine."

She was instantly cautious. "What do you want to know?"

"The Cullens adopted you?" I verified.

"Yes."

I hesitated for a moment. "What happened to your parents?"

"They died many years ago." Her tone was matter-of-fact.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

"I don't really remember them that clearly. Carine and Esme have been my parents for a long time now."

"And you love them." It wasn't a question. It was obvious in the way she said their names.

"Yes." She smiled. "I couldn't imagine two better people."

"You're very lucky."

"I know I am."

"And your sisters?"

She glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

"My sisters, and Jessamine and Rosalie for that matter, are going to be quite upset if they have to stand in the rain waiting for me."

"Oh, sorry, I guess you have to go." I didn't want to get out of the car.

"And you probably want your truck back before Chief Swan gets home, so you don't have to tell her about the syncopal episode." She grinned at me.

She was good with the medical jargon, but then, her mother was a doctor.

"I'm sure she's already heard. There are no secrets in Forks." I sighed.

She laughed, and there was an edge to her laughter.

"Have fun at the beach... good weather for sunbathing." She glanced out at the sheeting rain.

"Won't I see you tomorrow?"

"No. Eleanor and I are starting the weekend early."

"What are you going to do?" A friend could ask that, right? I hoped the disappointment wasn't too apparent in my voice.

"We're going to be hiking in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, just south of Rainier."

I remembered Charlie had said the Cullens went camping frequently.

"Oh, well, have fun." I tried to sound enthusiastic. I don't think I fooled her, though. A smile was playing around the edges of her lips.

"Will you do something for me this weekend?" She turned to look me straight in the face, utilizing the full power of her burning gold eyes.

I nodded helplessly. _Anything,_ I could have said, and it would have been true.

"Don't be offended, but you seem to be one of those people who just attract accidents like a magnet. So... try not to fall into the ocean or get run over or anything, all right?"

She flashed her dimples at me, which took away some of the sting of her teasing.

"I'll see what I can do.”

I jumped out into the vertical river and ran for the porch. By the time I turned around, the Volvo was gone.

“Oh!” I clutched at my jacket pocket, remembering that I’d forgotten to give her my key.

The pocket was empty.

 


	7. Scary Stories

 

As I sat in my room, trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth, I was really listening for my truck. I would have thought, even over the pounding rain, I could have heard the engine's roar. But when I went to peek out the curtain - again - it was suddenly there.

I wasn't looking forward to Friday, and it more than lived up to my negative expectations. Of course there were the fainting comments. Jessica especially seemed to get a kick out of that story. Luckily, McKayla had kept her mouth shut, and no one seemed to know about Edythe's involvement. She did have a lot of questions about lunch, though.

"So what did Edythe Cullen want yesterday?" Jessica asked in Trig.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. "She never really got to the point."

"She looked kind of mad," she fished.

"Did she?" I kept my expression blank.

"You know, I've never seen her sit with anyone but her family before. That was weird."

"Weird," I agreed. She seemed annoyed; she flipped her dark curls impatiently - I guessed she'd been hoping to hear something that would make a good story for her to pass on.

The worst part about Friday was that, even though I knew she wasn't going to be there, I still hoped. When I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica and McKayla, I couldn't keep from looking at her table, where Rosalie, Alice, and Jessamine sat talking, heads close together. And I couldn't stop the gloom that engulfed me as I realized I didn't know how long I would have to wait before I saw her again. I wondered if Alice had been the one to drive my truck home last night, and what she thought about the chore.

At my usual table, everyone was full of our plans for the next day. McKayla was animated again, putting a great deal of trust in the local weatherman who promised sun tomorrow. I'd have to see that before I believed it. But it was warmer today - almost sixty, though still wet. Maybe the outing wouldn't be completely miserable.

I intercepted a few unfriendly glances from Lauren during lunch, which I didn't understand until we were all walking out of the room together. I was right behind her, just a foot from her slick, silver blond hair, and she was evidently unaware of that.

"...don't know why Bella" - she sneered my name - "doesn't just sit with the Cullens from now on." I heard her muttering to McKayla. I'd never noticed what an unpleasant, nasal voice she had, and I was surprised by the malice in it. I really didn't know her well at all, certainly not well enough for her to dislike me - or so I'd thought.

"She's my friend; she sits with us," McKayla whispered back loyally, but also a bit territorially. I paused to let Jess and Angela pass me. I didn't want to hear any more.

  
That night at dinner, Charlie seemed enthusiastic about my trip to La Push in the morning. I think she felt guilty for leaving me home alone on the weekends, but she'd spent too many years building her habits to break them now. And I never minded the alone time.

Of course she knew the names of all the kids going, and their parents, and their great-grandparents, too, probably. She seemed to approve. I wondered if she would approve of my plan to ride to Seattle with Edythe Cullen. She seemed to like the Cullens a lot. Not that I was going to tell her.

"Ma, do you know a place called Goat Rocks or something like that? I think it's south of Mount Rainier," I asked casually.

"Yeah, why?"

I shrugged. "Some kids were talking about camping there."

"It's not a very good place for camping." She sounded surprised. "Too many bears. Most people go there during the hunting season."

"Oh," I murmured. "Maybe I got the name wrong."

I meant to sleep in, but an unusual brightness woke me. I opened my eyes to see a clear yellow light streaming through my window. I couldn't believe it. I hurried to the window to check, and sure enough, there was the sun. It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn't seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun.

Clouds ringed the horizon, but a large patch of blue was visible in the middle. I lingered by the window as long as I could, afraid that if I left the blue would disappear again.

Newtons' Olympic Outfitters was just north of town. I'd seen the store, but I'd never stopped there - not having much need for any supplies required for being outdoors over an extended period of time. In the parking lot I recognized McKayla's Suburban and Taylor's Sentra. As I pulled up next to their vehicles, I could see the group standing around in front of the Suburban. Erica was there, along with two other girls I had class with; I was fairly sure their names were Becca and Colleen. Jess was there, flanked by Angela and Lauren. Three other girls stood with them, including one I remembered falling over in Gym on Friday. That one gave me a dirty look as I got out of the truck, and whispered something to Lauren. Lauren shook out her cornsilk hair and eyed me scornfully.

So it was going to be one of those days.

At least McKayla was happy to see me.

"You came!" she called, delighted. "And I said it would be sunny today, didn't I?"

"I told you I was coming," I reminded her.

"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha... unless you invited someone," McKayla added.

"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur, and Edythe would appear.

McKayla looked satisfied. "Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."

"Sure."

She smiled blissfully. It was so easy to make McKayla happy.

"You can have shotgun," she promised. I hid my chagrin. It wasn't as simple to make McKayla and Jessica happy at the same time. I could see Jessica glowering at us now.

The numbers worked out in my favor, though. Lee brought two extra people, and suddenly every seat was necessary. I managed to wedge Jess in between McKayla and me in the front seat of the Suburban. McKayla could have been more graceful about it, but at least Jess seemed appeased.

It was only fifteen miles to La Push from Forks, with gorgeous, dense green forests edging the road most of the way and the wide Quillayute River snaking beneath it twice. I was glad I had the window seat. We'd rolled the windows down - the Suburban was a bit claustrophobic with nine people in it - and I tried to absorb as much sunlight as possible.

I'd been to the beaches around La Push many times during my Forks summers with Charlie, so the mile-long crescent of First Beach was familiar to me. It was still breathtaking. The water was dark gray, even in the sunlight, white-capped and heaving to the gray, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water's edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but close up were every shade a stone could be: terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, dull gold. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves.

There was a brisk wind coming off the water, cool and briny. Pelicans floated on the swells while seagulls and a lone eagle wheeled above them. The clouds still circled the sky, threatening to invade at any moment, but for now the sun shone bravely in its halo of blue sky.

We picked our way down to the beach, McKayla leading the way to a ring of driftwood logs that had obviously been used for parties like ours before. There was a fire circle already in place, filled with black ashes. Erica and the girl I thought was named Becca gathered broken branches of driftwood from the drier piles against the forest edge, and soon had a teepee-shaped construction built atop the old cinders.

"Have you ever seen a driftwood fire?" McKayla asked me. I was sitting on one of the bone-colored benches; the other girls clustered, gossiping excitedly, on either side of me. McKayla kneeled by the fire, lighting one of the smaller sticks with a cigarette lighter.

"No," I said as she placed the blazing twig carefully against the teepee.

"You'll like this then - watch the colors." She lit another small branch and laid it alongside the first. The flames started to lick quickly up the dry wood.

"It's blue," I said in surprise.

"The salt does it. Pretty, isn't it?" She lit one more piece, placed it where the fire hadn't yet caught, and then came to sit by me. Thankfully, Jess was on her other side. She turned to McKayla and claimed her attention. I watched the strange blue and green flames crackle toward the sky.

After a half hour of chatter, some of the girls wanted to hike to the nearby tidal pools, but most of the others wanted to head up to the one shop in the village for food. It was a dilemma. On the one hand, I loved the tide pools. They had fascinated me since I was a child; they were one of the only things I ever looked forward to when I had to come to Forks. On the other hand, I'd also fallen into them a lot. Not a big deal when you're seven and with your Ma. It reminded me of Edythe's request - that I not fall into the ocean.

Lauren was the one who made my decision for me. She didn't want to hike, and she was definitely wearing the wrong shoes for it. Most of the other girls besides Angela and Jessica decided to stay on the beach as well. I waited until Taylor and Erica had committed to remaining with them before I got up quietly to join the pro-hiking group. McKayla gave me a huge smile when she saw that I was coming.

The hike wasn't too long, though I hated to lose the sky in the woods. The green light of the forest was strangely at odds with the teenage laughter, too murky and ominous to be in harmony with the light banter around me. I had to watch each step I took very carefully, avoiding roots below and branches above, and I soon fell behind. Eventually I broke through the emerald confines of the forest and found the rocky shore again. It was low tide, and a tidal river flowed past us on its way to the sea. Along its pebbled banks, shallow pools that never completely drained were teeming with life.

I was very cautious not to lean too far over the little ocean ponds. The others were fearless, leaping over the rocks, perching precariously on the edges. I found a very stable-looking rock on the fringe of one of the largest pools and sat there cautiously, spellbound by the natural aquarium below me. The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible current, twisted shells scurried about the edges, obscuring the crabs within them, starfish stuck motionless to the rocks and each other, while one small black eel with white racing stripes wove through the bright green weeds, waiting for the sea to return. I was completely absorbed, except for one small part of my mind that wondered what Edythe was doing now, and trying to imagine what she would be saying if she were here with me.

Finally the others were hungry, and I got up stiffly to follow them back. I tried to keep up better this time through the woods, so naturally I fell a few times. I got some shallow scrapes on my palms, and the knees of my jeans were stained green, but it could have been worse.

When we got back to First Beach, the group we'd left behind had multiplied. As we got closer we could see the shining, straight black hair and copper skin of the newcomers, teenagers from the reservation come to socialize.

The food was already being passed around, and the hikers hurried to claim a share while Erica introduced us as we each entered the driftwood circle. Angela and I were the last to arrive, and, as Erica said our names, I noticed a younger girl sitting on the stones near the fire glance up at me in interest. I sat down next to Angela, and McKayla brought us sandwiches and an array of sodas to choose from, while a girl who looked to be the oldest of the visitors rattled off the names of the seven others with her. All I caught was that one of the girls was also named Jessica, and the girl who noticed me was named Julie.

It was relaxing to sit with Angela; she was a restful kind of person to be around - she didn't feel the need to fill every silence with chatter. She left me free to think undisturbed while we ate. And I was thinking about how disjointedly time seemed to flow in Forks, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. And then, at other times, every second was significant, etched in my mind. I knew exactly what caused the difference, and it disturbed me.

During lunch the clouds started to advance, slinking across the blue sky, darting in front of the sun momentarily, casting long shadows across the beach, and blackening the waves. As they finished eating, people started to drift away in twos and threes. Some walked down to the edge of the waves, trying to skip rocks across the choppy surface. Others were gathering a second expedition to the tide pools. McKayla - with Jessica shadowing her - headed up to the one shop in the village. Some of the local kids went with them; others went along on the hike. By the time they all had scattered, I was sitting alone on my driftwood log, with Lauren and Taylor occupying themselves by the portable speakers someone had thought to bring, and three teenagers from the reservation perched around the circle, including the girl named Julie and the oldest girl who had acted as spokesperson.

A few minutes after Angela left with the hikers, Julie sauntered over to take her place by my side. She looked fourteen, maybe fifteen, and had long, glossy black hair pulled back with a rubber band at the nape of her neck. Her skin was beautiful, silky and russet-colored; her eyes were dark, set deep above the high planes of her cheekbones. She still had just a hint of childish roundness left around her chin. Altogether, a very pretty face. However, my positive opinion of her looks was damaged by the first words out of her mouth.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?"

It was like the first day of school all over again.

"Bella," I sighed.

"I'm Julie Black." She held her hand out in a friendly gesture. "You bought my mom's truck."

"Oh," I said, relieved, shaking her sleek hand. "You're Bonnie's daughter. I probably should remember you."

"No, I'm the youngest of the family - you would remember my older sisters."

"Rachel and Rebecca," I suddenly recalled. Charlie and Bonnie had thrown us together a lot during my visits, to keep us busy while they fished. We were all too shy to make much progress as friends. Of course, I'd kicked up enough tantrums to end the fishing trips by the time I was eleven. “Rachel and Rebecca and…Jules, wasn’t it?”

She smiled. “You do remember. No one’s called me that since my sisters left.”

"They aren’t here?" I examined the girls at the ocean's edge, wondering if I would recognize them now.

"No." Jules shook her head. "Rachel got a scholarship to Washington State, and Rebecca married a Samoan surfer - she lives in Hawaii now."

"Married. Wow." I was stunned. The twins were only a little over a year older than I was.

"So how do you like the truck?" she asked.

"I love it. It runs great."

"Yeah, but it's really slow," she laughed. "I was _so_ relieved when Charlie bought it. My mom wouldn't let me work on building another car when we had a perfectly good vehicle right there."

"It's not that slow," I objected.

"Have you tried to go over sixty?"

"No," I admitted.

"Good. Don't." She grinned.

I couldn't help grinning back. "It does great in a collision," I offered in my truck's defense.

"I don't think a tank could take out that old monster," she agreed with another laugh.

"So you build cars?" I asked, impressed.

"When I have free time, and parts. You wouldn't happen to know where I could get my hands on a master cylinder for a 1986 Volkswagen Rabbit?" she added jokingly. She had an interesting voice, warm and kind of throaty.

"Sorry," I laughed, "I haven't seen any lately, but I'll keep my eyes open for you." As if I knew what that was. She was very easy to talk with.

She flashed a brilliant smile, looking at me appreciatively in a way I was learning to recognize. I wasn't the only one who noticed.

"You know Bella, Jules?" Lauren asked - in what I imagined was an insolent tone - from across the fire.

"We've sort of known each other since I was born," she laughed, smiling at me again.

"How nice." She didn't sound like she thought it was nice at all. I hadn’t noticed before how fishy her pale green eyes were.

"Bella," she called again, watching my face carefully, "I was just saying to Taylor that it was too bad none of the Cullens could come out today. Didn't anyone think to invite them?" Her expression of concern was unconvincing.

She looked at me like she _knew_ I’d asked Edythe to come, and thought it was hilarious that she’d turned me down. Only, it hadn’t felt like a rejection in the moment—it’d felt like she’d wanted to come with me, but couldn’t. Had I read her wrong?

My worries were interrupted by a strong, clear voice.

"You mean Dr. Carine Cullen's family?"

It was the older girl who had first introduced the local kids. She was even older than I’d thought, now that I looked at her close. Not really a girl at all, but a woman. Unlike Julie’s, her hair was cut very short. She was standing now, and I saw that she was very tall.

Lauren glared at her. "Yes, do you know them?" she asked condescendingly, only half-turned toward her.

"The Cullens don't come here," she said in a tone that closed the subject, ignoring her question.

Taylor, trying to win back her attention, asked Lauren's opinion on a playlist she was looking at. She was distracted.

I stared at the woman—she stood with a confident, straight posture, looking away toward the dark forest. She’d said that the Cullens didn’t come here, but her tone had implied something more, that they weren’t allowed to come, that they were prohibited from coming here. Her manner left a strange impression with me that I couldn’t shake.

Jules interrupted my meditation. "So is Forks driving you insane yet?"

"Oh, I'd say that's an understatement." I grimaced. She grinned understandingly.

I was still turning over the brief comment on the Cullens, and I had a sudden inspiration. It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have any better ideas. I hoped that young Jules was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that she wouldn't see through my sure-to-be-pitiful attempts at flirting.

"Do you want to walk down the beach with me?"

She looked at Lauren, then back to me with a quick grin. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

As we walked north across the multihued stones toward the driftwood seawall, the clouds finally closed ranks across the sky, causing the sea to darken and the temperature to drop. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jacket.

While we walked, I thought about the way Edythe could always get me to talk, how she would look at me from under her thick eyelashes and the gold of her eyes would burn and I would forget everything—my own name, how to breathe, everything but her. I eyed the girl walking alongside me now.

Jules just had on a long-sleeved t-shirt, but she swung her arms as she walked, not bothered by the cold. The wind whipped her silky black hair into twists and knots on her back. There was something very natural and open about her face. Even if I knew how to do that burning thing that Edythe did, this girl would probably just laugh at me. But not meanly, I didn’t think. With Jules, you would always be in on the joke.

“Nice friends,” she commented when we were far enough from the fire that the clattering of the stones beneath our feet was more than enough to drown out our voices.

“Not mine.”

She laughed. “I could tell.”

"So you're, what, sixteen?" I asked, trying not to look like an idiot as I fluttered my eyelids the way I'd seen girls do on TV.

"I just turned fifteen," she confessed, flattered.

"Really?" My face was full of false surprise. "I would have thought you were older."

"I'm tall for my age," she explained.

“Were those other kids your friends? That one seemed kind of…older.”

“That’s Samantha—Sam. She’s nineteen, I think. I don’t hand out with her. One of my friends was there before—Quil. I think she went up to the store.”

“I don’t remember which one she was.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t catch many names either. I only remember yours because you used to pull my hair.”

“I did? I’m so sorry!”

She laughed. “Your face. No, that was just my sisters. But I totally could have convinced you that you were guilty.”

It was easy to laugh with her. “Probably. Do you come up to Forks much?" I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself. I was afraid she would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but she still seemed flattered.

"Not too much," she admitted with a frown. "But when I get my car finished I can go up as much as I want - after I get my license," she amended.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

"What was that Sam was saying about the doctor's family?" I asked innocently.

"The Cullens? Oh, they're not supposed to come onto the reservation." She looked away, out toward James Island, as she confirmed what I'd thought I'd heard in Sam's voice.

"Why not?"

She glanced back at me, biting her lip. "Oops. I'm not supposed to say anything about that."

"Oh, I won't tell anyone, I'm just curious." I tried to make my smile alluring, wondering if I was laying it on too thick.

She smiled back, though, looking allured. Then she lifted one eyebrow and her voice was even huskier than before.

"Do you like scary stories?" she asked ominously.

"I love them," I enthused, making an effort to smolder at her.

Jules strolled to a nearby driftwood tree that had its roots sticking out like the attenuated legs of a huge, pale spider. She perched lightly on one of the twisted roots while I sat beneath her on the body of the tree. She stared down at the rocks, a smile hovering around the edges of her broad lips. I could see she was going to try to make this good. I focused on keeping the vital interest I felt out of my eyes.

"Do you know any of our old stories, about where we came from - the Quileutes, I mean?" she began.

"Not really," I admitted.

"Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood - supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark." She smiled, to show me how little stock she put in the histories. "Another legend claims that we descended from wolves - and that the wolves are our sisters still. It's against tribal law to kill them.

"Then there are the stories about the cold ones." Her voice dropped a little lower.

"The cold ones?" I asked, not faking my intrigue now.

"Yes. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, and some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. She was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land." She rolled her eyes.

"Your great-grandmother?" I encouraged.

"She was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf-well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves."

"Werewolves have enemies?"

"Only one."

I stared at her earnestly, hoping to disguise my impatience as admiration.

"So you see," Jules continued, "the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did - they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces." She winked at me.

"If they weren't dangerous, then why...?" I tried to understand, struggling not to let her see how seriously I was considering her ghost story.

"There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilized like this clan was. You never know when they might get too hungry to resist." She deliberately worked a thick edge of menace into her tone.

"What do you mean, 'civilized'?"

"They claimed that they didn't hunt humans. They supposedly were somehow able to prey on animals instead."

I tried to keep my voice casual. "So how does it fit in with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandmother met?"

"No." She paused dramatically. "They are the _same_ ones."

She must have thought the expression on my face was fear inspired by her story. She smiled, pleased, and continued.

"There are more of them now, a new blonde one and a little brunette, but the rest are the same. In my great-grandmother's time they already knew of the leader, Carine. She'd been here and gone before your people had even arrived." She was fighting a smile.

"And what are they?" I finally asked. "What are the cold ones?"

She smiled darkly.

"Blood drinkers," she replied in a chilling voice. "Your people call them vampires."

I stared out at the rough surf after she answered, not sure what my face was exposing. _Do you think I could be scary?_ Edythe’s voice repeated in my head.

"You have goose bumps," she laughed delightedly.

"You're a good storyteller," I complimented her, still staring into the waves.

"Pretty crazy stuff, though, isn't it? No wonder my mom doesn't want us to talk about it to anyone."

I couldn't control my expression enough to look at her yet. "Don't worry, I won't give you away."

"I guess I just violated the treaty," she laughed.

"I'll take it to the grave," I promised, and then I shivered.

"Seriously, though, don't say anything to Charlie. She was pretty mad at my mom when she heard that some of us weren't going to the hospital since Dr. Cullen started working there."

"I won't, of course not."

"So do you think we're a bunch of superstitious natives or what?" she asked in a playful tone, but with a hint of worry. I still hadn't looked away from the ocean.

I turned and smiled at her as normally as I could.

"No. I think you're very good at telling scary stories, though. I still have goose bumps, see?" I held up my arm.

"Cool." She smiled.

And then the sound of the beach rocks clattering against each other warned us that someone was approaching. Our heads snapped up at the same time to see McKayla and Jessica about fifty yards away, walking toward us.

"There you are, Bella," McKayla called in relief, waving her arm over her head.

"Is that your girlfriend?" Jules asked, alerted by the jealous edge in McKayla's voice. I was surprised it was so obvious.

"No, definitely not. Why does everyone thing that?" I whispered.

Jules snorted. “Maybe because she wants them to.”

I sighed. I was tremendously grateful to Jules, and eager to make her as happy as possible. I winked at her, carefully turning away from McKayla to do so. She smiled, elated by my inept flirting.

"So when I get my license..." she began.

"You should come see me in Forks. We could hang out sometime,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t know if it was because we’d known each other longer, if not well, or if it was because Jules was so easygoing, but I already felt more comfortable with her than I did with any of the girls I’d be riding home with.

McKayla had reached us now, with Jessica still a few paces back. I could see her eyes appraising Jules, and looking satisfied at her obvious youth.

"Where have you been?" she asked, though the answer was right in front of her.

"Jules was just telling me some local stories," I volunteered. "It was really interesting."

I smiled at Jules warmly, and she grinned back.

"Well," McKayla paused, carefully reassessing the situation as she watched our camaraderie. "We're packing up - it looks like it's going to rain soon."

We all looked up at the glowering sky. It certainly did look like rain.

"Okay." I jumped up. "I'm coming."

"It was nice to see you _again_ ," Jules said, and I could tell she was taunting McKayla just a bit.

"It really was. Next time Charlie comes down to see Bonnie, I'll come, too," I promised.

Her grin stretched across her face. "That would be cool."

"And thanks," I added earnestly.

She winked at me.

I pulled up my hood as we tramped across the rocks toward the parking lot. A few drops were beginning to fall, making black spots on the stones where they landed. When we got to the Suburban the others were already loading everything back in. I crawled into the backseat by Angela and Taylor, announcing that I'd already had my turn in the shotgun position. Angela just stared out the window at the escalating storm, and Lauren twisted around in the middle seat to occupy Taylor's attention, so I could simply lay my head back on the seat and close my eyes and try very hard not to think.


	8. Nightmare

 

I told Charlie I had a lot of homework to do, and that I’d filled up at La Push and didn’t want diner. There was a basketball game on that she was excited about, though of course I had no idea what was special about it, so she wasn't aware of anything unusual in my face or tone.

Once in my room, I locked the door. I dug through my desk until I found my old headphones, and I plugged them into my phone. I picked out a playlist that Phil had made me before I left. It was mostly one of his favorite bands, but they used a little too much bass and shrieking for my tastes. I started it and lay down on my bed. I put on the headphones and turned up the volume until it hurt my ears. I closed my eyes, but the light still intruded, so I added a pillow over the top half of my face.

I concentrated very carefully on the music, trying to understand the lyrics, to unravel the complicated drum patterns. By the third time I'd listened through the playlist, I knew all the words to the choruses, at least. I was surprised to find that I really did like the band after all, once I got past the blaring noise. I'd have to thank Phil again.

And it worked. The shattering beats made it impossible for me to think - which was the whole purpose of the exercise. I listened to the playlist again and again, until I was singing along with all the songs, until, finally, I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes to a familiar place. Aware in some corner of my consciousness that I was dreaming, I recognized the green light of the forest. I could hear the waves crashing against the rocks somewhere nearby. And I knew that if I found the ocean, I'd be able to see the sun. I was trying to follow the sound, but then Jules Black was there, tugging on my hand, pulling me back toward the blackest part of the forest.

"Jules? What's wrong?" I asked. Her face was frightened as she yanked with all her strength against my resistance; I didn't want to go into the dark.

"Run, Bella, you have to run!" she whispered, terrified.

"This way, Bella!" I recognized McKayla's voice calling out of the gloomy heart of the trees, but I couldn't see her.

"Why?" I asked, still pulling against Jules's grasp. Finding the sun was really important to the dream me. It was all I could focus on.

But Jules let go of my hand and yelped, suddenly shaking, falling to the dim forest floor. She twitched on the ground as I watched in horror, unable to move.

"Jules!" I screamed. But she was gone. In her place was a large red-brown wolf with black eyes. The wolf faced away from me, pointing toward the shore, the hair on the back of her shoulders bristling, low growls issuing from between her exposed fangs.

"Bella, run!" McKayla cried out again from behind me. But I didn't turn. I was watching a light coming toward me from the beach.

And then Edythe stepped out from the trees.

She wore a black dress. It hung all the way to the ground but exposed her arms to the shoulders and had a deep-cut V for a neckline. Her skin was faintly glowing, her eyes black and dangerous. She held up one hand and beckoned me to come to her. Her nails were filed into sharp points and painted a red so dark they were almost as black as her dress. Her lips were the same color.

The wolf growled at my feet.

I took a step forward, toward Edythe. She smiled then, and between her dark lips her teeth were sharp, pointed.

"Trust me," she purred.

I took another step.

The wolf launched herself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming for the jugular.

"No!" I screamed, wrenching upright out of my bed.

My sudden movement caused the headphones to pull my phone off the bedside table, and it clattered to the wooden floor.

My light was still on, and I was sitting fully dressed on the bed, with my shoes on. I glanced, disoriented, at the clock on my dresser. It was five-thirty in the morning.

I groaned, fell back, and rolled over onto my face, kicking off my boots. I was too uncomfortable to get anywhere near sleep, though. I rolled back over and unbuttoned my jeans, yanking them off awkwardly as I tried to stay horizontal. I could feel the braid in my hair, an uncomfortable ridge along the back of my skull. I turned onto my side and ripped the rubber band out, quickly combing through the plaits with my fingers. I pulled the pillow back over my eyes.

It was all no use, of course. My subconscious had dredged up exactly the images I'd been trying so desperately to avoid. I was going to have to face them now.

I sat up, and my head spun for a minute as the blood flowed downward. _First things first_ , I thought to myself, happy to put it off as long as possible. I grabbed my bathroom bag.

The shower didn't last nearly as long as I hoped it would, though. Even taking the time to blow-dry my hair, I was soon out of things to do in the bathroom. Wrapped in a towel, I crossed back to my room. I couldn't tell if Charlie was still asleep, or if she had already left. I went to look out my window, and the cruiser was gone. Fishing again.

I dressed slowly in my most comfy sweats and then made my bed - something I never did. I couldn't put it off any longer. I went to my desk and switched on my old computer.

I hated using the Internet here. My modem belonged in a museum, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited. Who even had dial up any more anyway?

I ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. When I was done, I washed the bowl and spoon, dried them, and put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to my phone first, picking it up off the floor and placing it precisely in the center of the table. I pulled out the headphones, and put them away in the desk drawer. Then I turned the same playlist on, turning it down to the point where it was background noise.

With another sigh, I turned to my computer. Naturally, the screen was covered in pop-up ads. I sat in my hard folding chair and began closing all the little windows. Eventually I made it to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in one word, feeling stupid before I even finished it.

I felt even stupider looking at it.

It took an infuriatingly long time, of course. When the results came up, there was a lot to sift through - everything from movies and TV shows to role-playing games, underground metal, and gothic cosmetic companies. There was a web series about queer girl vampires that looked like it might be entertaining so I made note of the title to look it up again later.

Then I found a promising site - Vampires A-Z. I waited impatiently for it to load, quickly clicking closed each ad that flashed across the screen. Finally the screen was finished - simple white background with black text, academic-looking. Two quotes greeted me on the home page:

  
_Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. - Rev. Montague Summers_

  
_If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires? - Rousseau_

  
The rest of the site was an alphabetized listing of all the different myths of vampires held throughout the world. The first I clicked on, the _Danag_ , was a Filipino vampire supposedly responsible for planting taro on the islands long ago. The myth continued that the _Danag_ worked with humans for many years, but the partnership ended one day when a woman cut her finger and a _Danag_ sucked her wound, enjoying the taste so much that it drained her body completely of blood.

I read carefully through the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible. It seemed that most vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity. Many of the stories involved bodiless spirits and warnings against improper burials. There wasn't much that sounded like the movies I'd seen, and only a very few, like the Hebrew _Estrie_ and the Polish _Upier_ , who were even preoccupied with drinking blood.

Only three entries really caught my attention: the Romanian _Varacolaci,_ a powerful undead being who could appear as a beautiful, pale-skinned human, the Slovak _Nelapsi_ , a creature so strong and fast it could massacre an entire village in the single hour after midnight, and one other, the _Stregoni benefici_.

About this last there was only one brief sentence.

_Stregoni benefici: An Italian vampire, said to be on the side of goodness, and a mortal enemy of all evil vampires._

It was a relief, that one small entry, the one myth among hundreds that claimed the existence of good vampires.

Overall, though, there was little that coincided with Jules's stories or my own observations. I'd made a little catalogue in my mind as I'd read and carefully compared it with each myth. Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jules's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal. There were very few myths that matched even one factor.

And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading - vampires couldn't come out in the daytime, the sun would burn them to a cinder. They slept in coffins all day and came out only at night.

Aggravated, I snapped off the computer's main power switch, not waiting to shut things down properly. Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me? I decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks - and the entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter.

I had to get out of the house, but there was nowhere I wanted to go that didn't involve a three-day drive. I pulled on my boots anyway, unclear where I was headed, and went downstairs. I shrugged into my raincoat without checking the weather and stomped out the door.

It was overcast, but not raining yet. I ignored my truck and started east on foot, angling across Charlie's yard toward the ever-encroaching forest. It didn't take long till I was deep enough for the house and the road to be invisible, for the only sound to be the squish of the damp earth under my feet and the sudden cries of the jays.

There was a thin ribbon of a trail that led through the forest here, or I wouldn't risk wandering on my own like this. My sense of direction was hopeless; I could get lost in much less helpful surroundings. The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly east as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples. I only vaguely knew the names of the trees around me, and all I knew was due to Charlie pointing them out to me from the cruiser window in earlier days. There were many I didn't know, and others I couldn't be sure about because they were so covered in green parasites.

I followed the trail as long as my anger at myself pushed me forward. As that started to ebb, I slowed. A few drops of moisture trickled down from the canopy above me, but I couldn't be certain if it was beginning to rain or if it was simply pools left over from yesterday, held high in the leaves above me, slowly dripping their way back to the earth. A recently fallen tree - I knew it was recent because it wasn't entirely carpeted in moss - rested against the trunk of one of her sisters, creating a sheltered little bench just a few safe feet off the trail. I stepped over the ferns and sat carefully, making sure my jacket was between the damp seat and my clothes wherever they touched, and leaned my hooded head back against the living tree.

This was the wrong place to have come. I should have known, but where else was there to go? The forest was deep green and far too much like the scene in last night's dream to allow for peace of mind. Now that there was no longer the sound of my soggy footsteps, the silence was piercing. The birds were quiet, too, the drops increasing in frequency, so it must be raining above. The ferns stood higher than my head, now that I was seated, and I knew someone could walk by on the path, three feet away, and not see me.

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom.

I forced myself to focus on the two most vital questions I had to answer.

First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jules had said about the Cullens could be true.

Immediately my mind responded with a resounding negative. It was silly and morbid to entertain such ridiculous notions.

 _But what, then?_ I asked myself. There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at this moment. I listed again in my head the things I'd observed myself: the impossible speed and strength, the eye color shifting from black to gold and back again, the inhuman beauty, the pale, frigid skin. And more - small things that registered slowly - how they never seemed to eat, the disturbing grace with which they moved. And the way she sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first-century classroom. She had skipped class the day we'd done blood typing. She hadn't said no to the beach trip till she heard where we were going. She seemed to know what everyone around her was thinking... except me. She had told me she was the villain, dangerous...

Could the Cullens be vampires?

Well, they were _something_. Something outside the possibility of rational justification was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes. Whether it be Jules's _cold ones_ or my own superhero theory, Edythe Cullen was not... human. She was something more.

So then - maybe. That would have to be my answer for now.

And then the most important question of all. What was I going to do if it was true?

 _If_ Edythe was a vampire - I could hardly make myself think the words - then what should I do? Involving someone else was definitely out. I couldn't even believe myself; anyone I told would have me committed.

Only two options seemed practical. The first was to take her advice: to be smart, to avoid her as much as possible. To cancel our plans, to go back to ignoring her as far as I was able. To pretend there was an impenetrably thick glass wall between us in the one class where we were forced together. To tell her to leave me alone - and mean it this time.

I was gripped in a sudden agony of despair as I considered that alternative. My mind rejected the pain, quickly skipping on to the next option.

I could do nothing different. After all, if she was something... sinister, she'd done nothing to hurt me so far. In fact, I would be a dent in Tyler's fender if she hadn't acted so quickly. So quickly, I argued with myself, that it might have been sheer reflexes. But if it was a reflex to save lives, how bad could she be? I retorted. My head spun around in answerless circles.

There was one thing I was sure of, if I was sure of anything. The dark Edythe in my dream last night was a reflection only of my fear of the word Jules had spoken, and not the real Edythe. Even so, when I'd screamed out in terror at the werewolf's lunge, it wasn't fear for the wolf that brought the cry of "no" to my lips. It was fear that _she_ would be harmed - even as she called to me with sharp-edged fangs, I feared for her.

And I knew in that I had my answer. I didn't know if there ever was a choice, really. I was already in too deep. Now that I knew - _if_ I knew - I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of her, of her voice, her hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of her personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with her right now. Even if... but I couldn't think it. Not here, alone in the darkening forest. Not while the rain made it dim as twilight under the canopy and pattered like footsteps across the matted earthen floor. I shivered and rose quickly from my place of concealment, worried that somehow the path would have disappeared with the rain.

But it was there, safe and clear, winding its way out of the dripping green maze. I followed it hastily, my hood pulled close around my face, becoming surprised, as I nearly ran through the trees, at how far I had come. I started to wonder if I was heading out at all, or following the path farther into the confines of the forest. Before I could get too panicky, though, I began to glimpse some open spaces through the webbed branches. And then I could hear a car passing on the street, and I was free, Charlie's lawn stretched out in front of me, the house beckoning me, promising warmth and dry socks.

It was just noon when I got back inside. I went upstairs and got dressed for the day, jeans and a t-shirt, since I was staying indoors. It didn't take too much effort to concentrate on my task for the day, a paper on Macbeth that was due Wednesday. I settled into outlining a rough draft contentedly, more serene than I'd felt since... well, since Thursday afternoon, if I was being honest.

That had always been my way, though. Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through - usually with relief that the choice was made. Sometimes the relief was tainted by despair, like my decision to come to Forks. But it was still better than wrestling with the alternatives.

This decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy.

And so the day was quiet, productive - I finished my paper before eight. Charlie came home with a large catch, and I made a mental note to pick up a book of recipes for fish while I was in Seattle next week. The chills that flashed up my spine whenever I thought of that trip were no different than the ones I'd felt before I'd taken my walk with Jules Black. They should be different, I thought. I should be afraid - I knew I should be, but I couldn't feel the right kind of fear.

I slept dreamlessly that night, exhausted from beginning my day so early, and sleeping so poorly the night before. I woke, for the second time since arriving in Forks, to the bright yellow light of a sunny day. I skipped to the window, stunned to see that there was hardly a cloud in the sky, and those there were just fleecy little white puffs that couldn't possibly be carrying any rain. I unlocked and opened the window - surprised when it opened silently, without sticking, not having opened it in who knows how many years - and sucked in the relatively dry air. It was nearly warm and hardly windy at all. My blood was electric in my veins.

Charlie was finishing breakfast when I came downstairs, and she picked up on my mood immediately.

"Nice day out," she commented.

"Yes," I agreed with a grin.

She smiled back, her brown eyes crinkling around the edges. When Charlie smiled, it was easier to see why she and my mother had jumped too quickly into an early marriage. Most of the young romantic she'd been in those days had faded before I'd known her. But when she smiled I could see a little of the woman who had run away with Renée when she was just two years older than I was now.

I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust moats stirring in the sunlight that streamed in the back window. Charlie called out a goodbye, and I heard the cruiser pull away from the house. I hesitated on my way out the door, hand on my rain jacket. It would be tempting fate to leave it home. With a sigh, I folded it over my arm and stepped out into the brightest light I'd seen in months.

By dint of much elbow grease, I was able to get both windows in the truck almost completely rolled down. I was one of the first ones to school; I hadn't even checked the clock in my hurry to get outside. I parked and headed toward the seldom-used picnic benches on the south side of the cafeteria. The benches were still a little damp, so I sat on my jacket, glad to have a use for it. My homework was done - the product of a slow social life - but there were a few Trig problems I wasn't sure I had right. I took out my book industriously, but halfway through rechecking the first problem I was daydreaming, watching the sunlight play on the red-barked trees. I sketched inattentively along the margins of my homework. After a few minutes, I suddenly realized I'd drawn five pairs of dark eyes staring out of the page at me. I scrubbed them out with the eraser.

"Bella!" I heard someone call, and it sounded like McKayla. I looked around to realize that the school had become populated while I'd been sitting there, absentminded. Everyone was in t-shirts, some even in shorts though the temperature couldn't be over sixty. McKayla was coming toward me in a skirt that only reached the middle of her thighs and a tank top.

"Hey, McKayla," I called, waving back, unable to be halfhearted on a morning like this.

She came to sit by me, the sun shimmering golden off her freshly straightened hair, her grin stretching across her face. She was so delighted to see me, I couldn't help but feel gratified.

"I never noticed before - your hair has red in it," she commented, catching between her fingers a strand that was fluttering in the light breeze.

"Only in the sun."

I became just a little uncomfortable as she tucked the lock behind my ear.

"Great day, isn't it?"

"My kind of day," I agreed.

"What did you do yesterday?" There was a strange sense of ownership in her question, and it reminded me of what Jules had said on Saturday. People thought she was my girlfriend because that was what McKayla wanted them to think. It made me uncomfortable again.

"I mostly worked on my essay." I didn't add that I was finished with it - no need to sound smug.

She hit her forehead with the heel of her hand. "Oh yeah - that's due Thursday, right?"

"Um, Wednesday, I think."

"Wednesday?" She frowned. "That's not good... What are you writing yours on?"

"Whether Shakespeare's treatment of the female characters is misogynistic."

"I guess I'll have to get to work on that tonight," she said, deflated. "I was going to ask if you wanted to go out."

"Oh." I was taken off guard. Why couldn't I ever have a pleasant conversation with McKayla anymore without it getting awkward?

"Well, we could go to dinner or something... and I could work on it later." She smiled at me hopefully.

"McKayla..." I hated being put on the spot. "I don't think that would be the best idea."

Her face fell. "Why?" she asked, her eyes guarded. My thoughts flickered to Edythe, wondering if that's where her thoughts were as well.

"I think... and if you ever repeat what I'm saying right now I will cheerfully beat you to death," I threatened, "but I think that would hurt Jessica's feelings."

She was bewildered, obviously not thinking in that direction at all. "Jessica?"

"Really, McKayla, are you blind?"

"Oh," she exhaled - clearly dazed. I took advantage of that to make my escape.

"It's time for class, and I can't be late again." I gathered my books up and stuffed them in my bag.

We walked in silence to building three, and her expression was distracted. I hoped whatever thoughts she was immersed in were leading her in the right direction.

When I saw Jessica in Trig, she was bubbling with enthusiasm. She, Angela, and Lauren were going to Port Angeles tonight to go dress shopping for the dance, and she wanted me to come, too, even though I didn't need one. I was indecisive. It would be nice to get out of town with some girlfriends, but Lauren would be there. And who knew what I could be doing tonight... But that was definitely the wrong path to let my mind wander down. Of course I was happy about the sunlight. But that wasn't completely responsible for the euphoric mood I was in, not even close.

So I gave her a maybe, telling her I'd have to talk with Charlie first.

She talked of nothing but the dance on the way to Spanish, continuing as if without an interruption when class finally ended, five minutes late, and we were on our way to lunch. I was far too lost in my own frenzy of anticipation to notice much of what she said. I was painfully eager to see not just her but all the Cullens - to compare them with the new suspicions that plagued my mind. As I crossed the threshold of the cafeteria, I felt the first true tingle of fear slither down my spine and settle in my stomach. Would they be able to know what I was thinking? And then a different feeling jolted through me - would Edythe be waiting to sit with me again?

As was my routine, I glanced first toward the Cullens' table. A shiver of panic trembled in my stomach as I realized it was empty. With dwindling hope, my eyes scoured the rest of the cafeteria, hoping to find her alone, waiting for me. The place was nearly filled - Spanish had made us late - but there was no sign of Edythe or any of her family. Desolation hit me with crippling strength.

I shambled along behind Jessica, not bothering to pretend to listen anymore.

We were late enough that everyone was already at our table. I avoided the empty chair next to McKayla in favor of one by Angela. I vaguely noticed that McKayla held the chair out politely for Jessica, and that her face lit up in response.

Angela asked a few quiet questions about the Macbeth paper, which I answered as naturally as I could while spiraling downward in misery. She, too, invited me to go with them tonight, and I agreed now, grasping at anything to distract myself.

What if, somehow, Edythe knew what I’d done this weekend? What if digging deeper into her secrets had triggered her disappearance? What if I’d done this to myself?

I realized I'd been holding on to a last shred of hope when I entered Biology, saw her empty seat, and felt a new wave of disappointment.

The rest of the day passed slowly, dismally. In Gym, we had a lecture on the rules of badminton, the next torture they had lined up for me. But at least it meant I got to sit and listen instead of stumbling around on the court. The best part was the coach didn't finish, so I got another day off tomorrow. Never mind that the day after they would arm me with a racket before unleashing me on the rest of the class.

I was glad to leave campus, so I would be free to pout and mope before I went out tonight with Jessica and company. But right after I walked in the door of Charlie's house, Jessica texted to cancel our plans. I tried to be happy that McKayla had asked her out to dinner - I really was relieved that she finally seemed to be catching on - but my enthusiasm didn’t seem to read over text. She rescheduled our shopping trip for tomorrow night.

Which left me with little in the way of distractions. I had fish marinating for dinner, with a salad and bread left over from the night before, so there was nothing to do there. I spent a focused half hour on homework, but then I was through with that, too. I checked my e-mail, reading the backlog of letters from my mother, getting snippier as they progressed to the present. I sighed and typed a quick response.

Mom,

Sorry. I've been out. I went to the beach with some friends. And I had to write a paper.

  
My excuses were fairly pathetic, so I gave up on that.

  
It's sunny outside today - I know, I'm shocked, too - so I'm going to go outside and soak up as much vitamin D as I can. I love you,

  
I decided to kill an hour with non-school-related reading. I had a small collection of books that came with me to Forks, the shabbiest volume being _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_. I selected that one and headed to the backyard, grabbing a ragged old quilt from the linen cupboard at the top of the stairs on my way down.

Outside in Charlie's small, square yard, I folded the quilt in half and laid it out of the reach of the trees' shadows on the thick lawn that would always be slightly wet, no matter how long the sun shone. I lay on my stomach, crossing my ankles in the air, flipping through the paperback, waiting for a word or phrase to catch my interest—usually a giant squid or a narwhal would be adequate—but today I went through the book twice without finding anything intriguing enough to start me reading. I snapped the book shut. Fine, whatever. I’d get a sunburn instead. I rolled onto my back, pushed my sleeves up as high as they would go, and closed my eyes. I would think of nothing but the warmth on my skin, I told myself severely. The breeze was still light, but it blew tendrils of my hair around my face, and that tickled a bit. I pulled all my hair over my head, letting it fan out on the quilt above me, and focused again on the heat that touched my eyelids, my cheekbones, my nose, my lips, my forearms, my neck, soaked through my light shirt...

I tried to reason with myself. There was no need to freak out. Edythe had said she was going camping. Maybe the others had been planning to join her all along. Maybe they’d all decided to stay an extra day because the weather was so nice. Missing a few days wasn’t going to affect any of her perfect grades. I could relax. I would see her again tomorrow for sure.

Even if she, or one of the others, could know what I was thinking, it was hardly a reason for skipping town. I didn’t believe any of it myself, and it wasn’t like I was going to say anything to someone else. It was stupid. I knew the whole idea was completely ridiculous. Obviously, there was no reason for anyone—vampire or not—to overreact.

It was just as ridiculous to imagine that someone could read my mind. I needed to stop being so paranoid. Edythe would be back tomorrow.

Mellow. Relaxed. Normal. I could handle that. Just breathe in and out.

The next thing I was conscious of was the sound of Charlie's cruiser turning onto the bricks of the driveway. I sat up in surprise, realizing the light was gone, behind the trees, and I had fallen asleep. I looked around, muddled, with the sudden feeling that I wasn't alone.

"Charlie?" I asked. But I could hear her door slamming in front of the house.

I jumped up, feeling edgy, gathering the now-damp quilt and my book. I ran inside to get some oil heating on the stove, realizing that dinner would be late. Charlie was hanging up her gun belt and stepping out of her boots when I came in. I locked the door behind me, making sure to wait for the click.

"Sorry, Dad, dinner's not ready yet - I fell asleep outside." I stifled a yawn.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I wanted to catch the score on the game, anyway."

I watched TV with Charlie after dinner, for something to do. There wasn't anything on I wanted to watch, but she knew I didn't like baseball, so she turned it to some mindless sitcom that neither of us enjoyed. She seemed happy, though, to be doing something together. And it felt good, despite my depression, to make her happy.

"Ma," I said during a commercial, "Jessica and Angela are going to look at dresses for the dance tomorrow night in Port Angeles, and they wanted me to help them choose... do you mind if I go with them?"

"Jessica Stanley?" she asked.

"And Angela Weber." I sighed as I gave her the details.

She was confused. "But you're not going to the dance, right?"

"No, Ma, but I'm helping them find dresses - you know, giving them constructive criticism." I wouldn't have to explain this to my other mom.

"Well, okay." She seemed to realize that she was out of her depth with the girlie stuff. "It's a school night, though."

"We'll leave right after school, so we can get back early. You'll be okay for dinner, right?"

"Bells, I fed myself for seventeen years before you got here," she reminded me.

"I don't know how you survived," I muttered, then added more clearly, "I'll leave some things for cold-cut sandwiches in the fridge, okay? Right on top."

It was sunny again in the morning. I awakened with renewed hope that I grimly tried to suppress. I dressed for the warmer weather in a deep blue V-neck blouse - something I'd worn in the dead of winter in Phoenix.

I had planned my arrival at school so that I barely had time to make it to class. With a sinking heart, I circled the full lot looking for a space, while also searching for the silver Volvo that was clearly not there. I parked in the last row and hurried to English, arriving breathless, but subdued, before the final bell.

It was the same as yesterday - I just couldn't keep little sprouts of hope from budding in my mind, only to have them squashed painfully as I searched the lunchroom in vain and sat at my empty Biology table. What if she never came back? What if I never saw her again? Why did the thought make my heart hurt?

The Port Angeles scheme was back on again for tonight and made all the more attractive by the fact that Lauren had other obligations. I was anxious to get out of town so I could stop glancing over my shoulder, hoping to see her appearing out of the blue the way she always did. I vowed to myself that I would be in a good mood tonight and not ruin Angela's or Jessica's enjoyment in the dress hunting. Maybe I could do a little clothes shopping as well. I refused to think that I might be shopping alone in Seattle this weekend, no longer interested in the earlier arrangement. Surely she wouldn't cancel without at least telling me. But then, who knew what social rules vampires felt compelled to follow?

After school, Jessica followed me home in her old white Mercury so that I could ditch my books and truck. I brushed through my hair quickly when I was inside, feeling a slight lift of excitement as I contemplated getting out of Forks. I left a note for Charlie on the table, explaining again where to find dinner, switched my scruffy wallet from my school bag to a purse I rarely used, and ran out to join Jessica. We went to Angela's house next, and she was waiting for us. My excitement increased exponentially as we actually drove out of the town limits.

 

 


	9. Port Angeles

 

Jess drove faster than the Chief, so we made it to Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the other girls we hung out with. Jessica's dinner with McKayla had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I smiled to myself, pleased. Angela was passively happy to be going to the dance, but not really interested in Erica. Jess tried to get her to confess who her type was, but I interrupted with a question about dresses after a bit, to spare her. Angela threw a grateful glance my way.

Port Angeles was a beautiful little tourist trap, much more polished and quaint than Forks. But Jessica and Angela knew it well, so they didn't plan to waste time on the picturesque boardwalk by the bay. Jess drove straight to the one big department store in town, which was a few streets in from the bay area's visitor-friendly face.

The dance was billed as semiformal, and we weren't exactly sure what that meant. Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised and almost disbelieving when I told them I'd never been to a dance in Phoenix.

"Didn't you ever go with a boyfriend or girlfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.

"Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."

"Why not?" Jessica demanded.

"No one asked me," I answered honestly.

She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no." We were in the juniors' section now, scanning the racks for dress-up clothes.

"Well, except for Taylor," Angela amended quietly.

"Excuse me?" I gasped. "What did you say?"

"Taylor told everyone she's taking you to prom," Jessica informed me with suspicious eyes.

"She said what?" I sounded like I was choking.

"I told you it wasn't true," Angela murmured to Jessica.

I was silent, still lost in shock that was quickly turning to irritation. But we had found the dress racks, and now we had work to do.

"That's why Lauren doesn't like you," Jessica giggled while we pawed through the clothes.

I ground my teeth. "Do you think that if I ran her over with my truck she would stop feeling guilty about the accident? That she might give up on making amends and call it even?"

"Maybe," Jess snickered. '"If that's why she's doing this."

The dress selection wasn't large, but both of them found a few things to try on. I sat on a low chair just inside the dressing room, by the three-way mirror, trying to control my fuming.

Jess was torn between two - one a long, strapless, basic black number, the other a knee-length electric blue with spaghetti straps. I encouraged her to go with the blue; why not have more contrast with her dark skin? Angela chose a pale pink dress that draped around her tall frame nicely. I complimented them both generously and helped by returning the rejects to their racks. The whole process was much shorter and easier than similar trips I'd taken with Renée at home. I guess there was something to be said for limited choices.

We headed over to shoes and accessories. While they tried things on I merely watched and critiqued, not in the mood to shop for myself, though I did need new shoes. The girls'-night high was wearing off in the wake of my annoyance at Taylor, leaving room for the gloom to move back in.

"Angela?" I began, hesitant, while she was trying on a pair of pink strappy heels - she was overjoyed to have a date tall enough that she could wear high heels at all.

Jessica had drifted to the jewelry counter and we were alone.

"Yes?" She held her leg out, twisting her ankle to get a better view of the shoe.

I chickened out. "I like those."

"I think I'll get them - though they'll never match anything but the one dress," she mused.

"Oh, go ahead - they're on sale," I encouraged. She smiled, putting the lid back on a box that contained more practical-looking off-white shoes.

I tried again. "Um, Angela..." She looked up curiously.

"Is it normal for the... Cullens" - I kept my eyes on the shoes - "to be out of school a lot?" I failed miserably in my attempt to sound nonchalant.

"Yes, when the weather is good they go backpacking all the time - even the doctor. They're all real outdoorsy," she told me quietly, examining her shoes, too. She didn't ask one question, let alone the hundreds that Jessica would have unleashed. I was beginning to really like Angela. She was probably the nicest kid at Forks High School.

"Oh." I let the subject drop as Jessica returned to show us the rhinestone jewelry she'd found to match her silver shoes.

We planned to go to dinner at a little Italian restaurant on the boardwalk, but the dress shopping hadn't taken as long as we'd expected. Jess and Angela were going to take their clothes back to the car and then walk down to the bay. I told them I would meet them at the restaurant in an hour - I wanted to look for a bookstore. They were both willing to come with me, but I encouraged them to go have fun - they didn't know how preoccupied I could get when surrounded by books; it was something I preferred to do alone. They walked off to the car chattering happily, and I headed in the direction Jess pointed out.

It was a relief to be alone again. The field trip was backfiring. Sure, Angela’s answer had been encouraging, but I just couldn’t force myself into a good mood. Nothing helped me think about Edythe less. Maybe a _really_ good book would help.

I had no trouble finding the bookstore, but it wasn't what I was looking for. The windows were full of crystals, dream-catchers, and books about spiritual healing. I didn't even go inside. Through the glass I could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter. I decided that was one conversation I could skip. There had to be a normal bookstore in town.

I meandered through the streets, which were filling up with end-of-the-workday traffic, and hoped I was headed toward downtown. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should to where I was going; I was wrestling with despair. I was trying so hard not to think about her, and what Angela had said... and more than anything trying to beat down my hopes for Saturday, fearing a disappointment more painful than the rest, when I looked up to see someone's silver Volvo parked along the street and it all came crashing down on me. Stupid, unreliable vampire, I thought to myself.

I stomped along in a southerly direction, toward some glass-fronted shops that looked promising. But when I got to them, they were just a vacuum repair shop and a vacant space. I still had too much time to go looking for Jess and Angela yet, and I definitely needed to get my mood in hand before I met back up with them. I ran my fingers through my hair a couple of times and took some deep breaths before I continued around the corner.

I started to realize, as I crossed another road, that I was going the wrong direction. The little foot traffic I had seen was going north, and it looked like the buildings here were mostly warehouses. I decided to turn east at the next corner, and then loop around after a few blocks and try my luck on a different street on my way back to the boardwalk.

A group of four men turned around the corner I was heading for, dressed too casually to be heading home from the office, but they were too grimy to be tourists. As they approached me, I realized they weren't too many years older than I was. They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other's arms. I scooted as far to the inside of the sidewalk as I could to give them room, walking swiftly, looking past them to the corner.

"Hey, there!" one of them called as they passed, and he had to be talking to me since no one else was around. I glanced up automatically. Two of them had paused, the other two were slowing. The closest, a heavyset, dark-haired man in his early twenties, seemed to be the one who had spoken. He was wearing a flannel shirt open over a dirty t-shirt, cut-off jeans, and sandals. He took half a step toward me.

"Hello," I mumbled, a knee-jerk reaction. Then I quickly looked away and walked faster toward the corner. I could hear them laughing at full volume behind me.

"Hey, wait!" one of them called after me again, but I kept my head down and rounded the corner with a sigh of relief. I could still hear them chortling behind me.

I found myself on a sidewalk leading past the backs of several somber-colored warehouses, each with large bay doors for unloading trucks, padlocked for the night. The south side of the street had no sidewalk, only a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protecting some kind of engine parts storage yard. I'd wandered far past the part of Port Angeles that I, as a guest, was intended to see. It was getting dark, I realized, the clouds finally returning, piling up on the western horizon, creating an early sunset. The eastern sky was still clear, but graying, shot through with streaks of pink and orange. I'd left my jacket in the car, and a sudden shiver made me cross my arms tightly across my chest. A single van passed me, and then the road was empty.

The sky suddenly darkened further, and, as I looked over my shoulder to glare at the offending cloud, I realized with a shock that two men were walking quietly twenty feet behind me.

They were from the same group I'd passed at the corner, though neither was the dark one who'd spoken to me. I turned my head forward at once, quickening my pace. A chill that had nothing to do with the weather made me shiver again. My purse was on a shoulder strap and I had it slung across my body, the way you were supposed to wear it so it wouldn't get snatched. I knew exactly where my pepper spray was - still in my duffle bag under the bed, never unpacked. I didn't have much money with me, just a twenty and some ones, and I thought about "accidentally" dropping my bag and walking away. But a small, frightened voice in the back of my mind warned me that they might be something worse than thieves.

I listened intently to their quiet footsteps, which were much too quiet when compared to the boisterous noise they'd been making earlier, and it didn't sound like they were speeding up, or getting any closer to me. Breathe, I had to remind myself. You don't know they're following you. I continued to walk as quickly as I could without actually running, focusing on the right-hand turn that was only a few yards away from me now. I could hear them, staying as far back as they'd been before. A blue car turned onto the street from the south and drove quickly past me. I thought of jumping out in front of it, but I hesitated, inhibited, unsure that I was really being pursued, and then it was too late.

I reached the corner, but a swift glance revealed that it was only a blind drive to the back of another building. I was half-turned in anticipation; I had to hurriedly correct and dash across the narrow drive, back to the sidewalk. The street ended at the next corner, where there was a stop sign. I concentrated on the faint footsteps behind me, deciding whether or not to run. They sounded farther back, though, and I knew they could outrun me in any case. I was sure to trip and go sprawling if I tried to go any faster. The footfalls were definitely farther back. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, and they were maybe forty feet back now, I saw with relief. But they were both staring at me.

It seemed to take forever for me to get to the corner. I kept my pace steady, the men behind me falling ever so slightly farther behind with every step. Maybe they realized they had scared me and were sorry. I saw two cars going north pass the intersection I was heading for, and I exhaled in relief. There would be more people around once I got off this deserted street. I skipped around the corner with a grateful sigh.

And skidded to a stop.

The street was lined on both sides by blank, door-less, windowless walls. I could see in the distance, two intersections down, streetlamps, cars, and more pedestrians, but they were all too far away. Because lounging against the western building, midway down the street, were the other two men from the group, both watching with excited smiles as I froze dead on the sidewalk. I realized then that I wasn't being followed.

I was being herded.

I paused for only a second, but it felt like a very long time. I turned then and darted to the other side of the road. I had a sinking feeling that it was a wasted attempt. The footsteps behind me were louder now.

"There you are!" The booming voice of the stocky, dark-haired man shattered the intense quiet and made me jump. In the gathering darkness, it seemed like he was looking past me.

"Yeah," a voice called loudly from behind me, making me jump again as I tried to hurry down the street. "We just took a little detour."

My steps had to slow now. I was closing the distance between myself and the lounging pair too quickly. I had a good loud scream, and I sucked in air, preparing to use it, but my throat was so dry I wasn't sure how much volume I could manage. With a quick movement I slipped my purse over my head, gripping the strap with one hand, ready to surrender it or use it as weapon as need demanded.

The thickset man shrugged away from the wall as I warily came to a stop, and walked slowly into the street.

"Stay away from me," I warned in a voice that was supposed to sound strong and fearless. But I was right about the dry throat - no volume.

"Don't be like that, sugar," he called, and the raucous laughter started again behind me.

I braced myself, feet apart, trying to remember through my panic what little self-defense I knew. Heel of the hand thrust upward, hopefully breaking the nose or shoving it into the brain. Finger through the eye socket - try to hook around and pop the eye out. And the standard knee to the groin, of course. That same pessimistic voice in my mind spoke up then, reminding me that I probably wouldn't have a chance against one of them, and there were four. Shut up! I commanded the voice before terror could incapacitate me. I wasn't going out without taking someone with me. I tried to swallow so I could build up a decent scream.

A shrill squeal froze him in place. We all stared up as the noise turned piercing.

Headlights suddenly flew around the corner, the car almost hitting the stocky one, forcing him to jump back toward the sidewalk. The chain-link rattled when he rammed into it. I dove into the road - this car was going to stop, or have to hit me. But the silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet from me.

"Get in," a furious voice commanded.

It was amazing how instantaneously the choking fear vanished, amazing how suddenly the feeling of security washed over me - even before I was off the street - as soon as I heard her voice. I jumped into the seat, slamming the door shut behind me.

“Drive, Edythe, get out of here.”

But the car didn’t move.

“Keep your head _down_ ,” she ordered, and I heard the driver’s side door open.

I reached out blindly toward the sound of her voice, and my hand caught her slim, cold arm. She froze when I touched her. There was no give, though my fingers wrapped tight around the leather of her jacket.

“What are you _doing_?” I demanded. “Drive!”

My eyes were adjusting, and I could just make out her eyes in the reflected glow of the headlights. First they looked at my hand gripping her arm, then they narrowed and glared out the windshield toward where the men must be watching, evaluating. They could come at us any second.

“Give me just a minute here, Bella.” I could tell her teeth were clenched together.

I knew she would have no problem breaking free of my grasp, but she seemed to be waiting for me to let her go. That wasn’t going to happen.

“If you go out there, I’m going with you,” I said quietly. “I’m not letting you get hurt.”

Her eyes glared forward for another half-second, and then her door slammed shut and we were reversing at what felt like about sixty.

“Fine,” she huffed.

It was dark in the car, no light had come on with the opening of the door, and I could barely see her face in the glow from the dashboard. The tires squealed as she spun around to face north, accelerating too quickly, swerving toward the stunned men on the street. I caught a glimpse of them diving for the sidewalk as we straightened out and sped toward the harbor.

"Put on your seat belt," she commanded, and I realized I was still clutching her arm. I quickly obeyed; the snap as the belt connected was loud in the darkness.

She took a sharp left, racing forward, blowing through several stop signs without a pause.

But I felt utterly safe and, for the moment, totally unconcerned about where we were going. I stared at her face in profound relief, relief that went beyond my lucky escape.

She was here. She was real. I studied her flawless features in the limited light, waiting for my breath to return to normal, until it occurred to me that her expression was murderously angry.

"Are you okay?" I asked, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded.

"No," she snapped.

I sat in silence, watching his face while his blazing eyes stared straight ahead.

The car came to a sudden, screeching stop. I glanced around, but it was too dark to see anything besides the vague outline of dark trees crowding the roadside. We weren't in town anymore.

"Are you hurt at all, Bella?” she asked, her voice hard.

"No.” My voice was still rough. I tried to clear my throat quietly. “Are you?”

She looked at me then, with a kind of irritated disbelief. “Of course I’m not hurt.”

"Good.” I said. “Uh, can I ask why you’re so mad?”

She gave me another disbelieving look and then shook her head. “Do you think you would be all right if I left you here in the car for just a few—“

Before she could finish, I reached out to grab her hand where it rested on the gearshift. She reacted by freezing again; she didn’t pull her hand away.

It was the first time I’d really touched her skin, when it wasn’t accidental and just fo a fraction of a second. Though her hand was as cold as I expected, my hand seemed to burn from the contact. Her skin was so smooth.

“You’re not going anywhere without me.”

She glared at me, and like before, it was as if she were waiting for me to let go instead of just yanking free like she could easily have done.

After a moment, she closed her eyes.

"Fine. Distract me, please," she ordered.

"I'm sorry, what?"

She exhaled sharply.

"Just prattle about something unimportant until I calm down," she clarified, closing her eyes.

"Um." I wracked my brain for something trivial. "I'm going to run over Taylor Crowley tomorrow before school?"

She was still squeezing her eyes closed, but the corner of her mouth twitched. I was okay with that. I kept my hand lightly on hers, taking advantage of her closed eyes to stare openly.

"Why?"

"She's telling everyone that she's taking me to prom - either she's insane or she's still trying to make up for almost killing me last... well, you remember it, and she thinks prom is somehow the correct way to do this. So I figure if I endanger his life, then we're even, and she can't keep trying to make amends. I don't need enemies and maybe Lauren would back off if she left me alone. I might have to total his Sentra, though. If she doesn't have a ride she can't take anyone to prom..." I babbled on.

"I heard about that." She sounded a bit more composed. Slowly, the tension in her face started to relax until it was smooth and blank as a stature. A beautiful statue, carved by an artistic genius. Aphrodite, maybe, the goddess of beauty.

"You did?" I asked in disbelief, my previous irritation flaring. "If she's paralyzed from the neck down, she can't go to the prom, either," I muttered, refining my plan.

There was a faint fragrance in the car again—something elusive that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Edythe sighed, she slowly opened her eyes and looked down at my hand.

“Do you…want me to let go?” I asked.

Her voice was careful. “I think that might be for the best.”

“You’re not going anywhere?” I checked.

“I suppose not, if you’re that opposed.”

Unwillingly, I pulled my hand from hers. It felt like I’d been holding a handful of ice cubes.

"Better?"

She took a deep breath. "Not really."

I waited, but she didn't speak again. She leaned her head back against the seat, staring at the ceiling of the car.

"What's wrong?" My voice came out in a whisper.

"Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella. Sometimes it’s hard for me to forgive easily when someone…offends me." She was whispering, too, and as she stared out the window, her eyes narrowed into slits. "But it wouldn't be helpful for me to turn around and hunt down those..." She didn't finish her sentence, looking away, struggling for a moment to control her anger again. "At least," she continued, "that's what I'm trying to convince myself."

"Oh." The word seemed inadequate, but I couldn't think of a better response.

“Do you realize that they were serious? That they planned to hurt you?”

“Yeah, I figured they were going to try.”

She tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips, exhaling though her nose. “So I’m not allowed to go teach those animals a lesson in manners?”

“Um, no. Please?”

She sighed a long, slow sigh, and her eyes closed again. “How disagreeable.”

We sat in silence for a moment while I tried to think of something to say that would make up for…I guess, disappointing her? That was what it seemed like—that she was disappointed I was asking her not to go looking for multiple dangerous men who had… _offended_ her by threatening me. It didn’t make much sense—and even less so when you factored in that she had asked me to stay in the car. She was planning to go on foot? We’d driven miles away.

For the first time since I’d seen her tonight, the word Jules had said popped into my mind.

Her eyes opened at the same moment, and I wondered if she’s somehow known what I was thinking. But she just looked at the clock and sighed again.

“Your friends must be worried about you,” she said.

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was past six-thirty. I was sure she was right.

She started the engine without another word, turning around smoothly and speeding back toward town. We were under the streetlights in no time at all, still going too fast, weaving with ease through the cars slowly cruising the boardwalk. She parallel-parked against the curb in a space I would have thought much too small for the Volvo, but she slid in effortlessly in one try. I looked out the window to see the lights of La Bella Italia, and Jess and Angela just leaving, pacing anxiously away from us.

"How did you know where...?" I began, but then I just shook my head.

"Go stop Jessica and Angela before I have to track them down, too. I don't think I could restrain myself if I ran into your other friends again."

It was strange how her silky voice could sound so…menacing.

I jumped out of the car but kept my hand on the frame. Like before, holding her there.

"Jess! Angela!" I yelled after them, waving when they turned. They rushed back to me, the pronounced relief on both their faces simultaneously changing to surprise as they saw the car I was standing next to. Angella stared into the recesses of the car, and then her eyes popped wide in recognition.

"Where have you been?" Jessica's voice was suspicious.

"I got lost," I admitted sheepishly. "And then I ran into Edythe." I gestured toward her.

She leaned forward and smiled through the windshield. Now Jessica’s eyes bugged out.

“Oh, hi…Edythe,” Angela said.

Edythe waved at her with two fingers, and Angela swallowed loudly.

“Uh, hey,” Jessica said in Edythe’s direction; then she stared at me—I must have looked odd, my one hand locked on the frame of the open door, but I wasn’t letting go.

Edythe opened her door and stepped out, shaking her long hair back from her face. She leaned on the frame and threw her dimpled smile at them. Jessica’s mouth fell open.

"Would it be all right if I joined you?" she asked in her silken, irresistible voice. I could see from their staggered expressions that she had never unleashed her talents on them before.

"Er... sure," Jessica breathed.

"Um, actually, Bella, we already ate while we were waiting - sorry," Angela confessed.

"That's fine - I'm not hungry." I shrugged.

"I think you should eat something." Edythe's voice was low, but full of authority. She looked up at Jessica and spoke slightly louder. "Will it ruin your night if I make Bella take me to dinner?” she asked.

Jessica just shook her head. She hadn’t remembered how to close her mouth yet.

“Thanks,” she told her, dimpling again. “I’ll give Bella a ride home.”

"Uh, no problem, I guess..." She bit her lip, trying to figure out from my expression whether that was what I wanted. I winked at her. I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior. There were so many questions that I couldn't bombard him with till we were by ourselves.

"Okay." Angela was quicker than Jessica. "See you tomorrow, Bella... Edythe." She grabbed Jessica's hand and pulled her toward the car, which I could see a little ways away, parked across First Street. As they got in, Jess turned and waved, her face eager with curiosity. I waved back, waiting for them to drive away before I turned to face Edythe.

“Did you really want dinner?” I asked her.

She looked at me questioningly. Was she thinking what I was thinking—that I’d never actually seen her eat anything?

“I thought you might,” she finally said.

"Honestly, I'm not hungry," I insisted, looking up to scrutinize her face. Her expression was unreadable.

"Humor me."

She walked to the door of the restaurant and held it open with an obstinate expression. Obviously, there would be no further discussion. I walked past her into the restaurant with a resigned sigh. My palms started to sweat a little. I’d never really been on a real date before.

She smiled at me as I walked past, and my heart did this weird double-beat thing.

The restaurant wasn't crowded—it was the off-season in Port Angeles. The host was female, and I understood the look in her eyes as she assessed Edythe. She welcomed her a little more warmly than necessary. I was surprised by how much that bothered me. She was several inches taller than I was, and unnaturally blonde. I was pretty sure she didn’t even know I was standing there next to her.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, still looking only at Edythe.

"A table for two, please." Her voice was alluring, whether she was aiming for that or not.

I saw the hostess’s eyes flicker to me and then away, satisfied by my obvious ordinariness, and by the cautious, no-contact space Edythe kept between us. She led us to a table big enough for four in the center of the most crowded area of the dining floor. I was about to sit, but Edythe shook her head at me.

"Perhaps something more private?" she insisted quietly to the hostess. It looked like she brushed the top of her hand with her fingers, which I already knew was unlike her—she didn’t touch people if she could help it—but then I saw the hostess slide that hand into her pants pocket, and I realized that Edythe must have given her a tip. I'd never seen anyone refuse a table except in old movies.

"Sure." She sounded as surprised as I was. She turned and led us around a partition to a small ring of booths—all of them empty. "How's this?"

"Perfect." Edythe flashed her gleaming smile, dazing her momentarily.

Like a deer in headlights, the hostess froze for a long second. "Um" - she shook her head, blinking - "your server will be right out." She walked away unsteadily, our menus still in the crook of her arm.

Edythe slid into one side of the booth, sitting close to the edge so that my only option was to sit facing her with the length of the table between us. After a second of hesitation, I sat, too.

Something thudded a couple of times on the other side of the partition, like the sound of someone tripping over their own feet and then recovering. It was a sound I was familiar with.

"You really shouldn't do that to people," I criticized. "It's not very nice."

She stared at me, surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever that thing you do is-0with the dimples and the hypnotizing or whatever. She's probably hyperventilating in the kitchen right now."

She half-smiled. “I do a _thing_?”

"Oh, come on," I said dubiously. "Like you don’t know the effect you have on people."

“I suppose I can think of a few effects…” Her expression went dark for a tiny second, but then it cleared and she smiled. “But no one’s ever accused me of hypnotism by dimples before.”

"You haven't noticed? Do you think everybody gets their way so easily?"

She titled her head to the side, ignoring my question. “Does it work on you—this _thing_ you think I do?”

"Frequently," I admitted with a sigh.

And then our server arrived, her face expectant. The hostess had definitely dished behind the scenes, and this new girl didn't look disappointed. She flipped a strand of short black hair behind one ear and smiled with unnecessary warmth.

"Hello. My name is Amber, and I'll be your server tonight. What can I get you to drink?" I didn't miss that she was speaking only to Edythe.

Edythe looked at me.

"I'll have a Coke." It sounded like a question.

I might as well not have spoken at all. The waitress just kept staring at Edythe. She flashed a grin at me before turning to her.

"Two Cokes," she told her, and, almost like an experiment, she smiled a wide dimpled smile right into her face.

The waitress actually wobbled, like she was going to keel over.

Edythe pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. The waitress shook her head and blinked, trying to reorient. I watched sympathetically. I knew just how she felt.

“And a menu?” Edythe added when she didn’t move.

"I'll be right back with that," she assured Edythe with another unnecessary smile. She was still shaking her head as she walked out of sight.

“You’ve seriously never noticed that before?” I asked her.

“It’s been a while since I cared what anyone thought about me,” she said. “And I don’t usually smile so much.”

“Probably safer that way—for everyone.”

“Everyone but you. Shall we talk about what happened tonight?”

"What?"

“Your near-death experience? Or did you already forget?”

“Oh.” Actually, I had.

Her eyes stayed fixed on my face. "How are you feeling?"

“What do you mean?” I hoped she didn’t turn on the hypnotist eyes and make me tell the truth, because what I felt right now was…euphoria. She was right here, with me—on purpose—I’d gotten to touch her hand, and I probably had a few hours ahead to spend with her, too, since she’d promised to drive me home. I’d never felt so happy and so off-balance at the same time.

"You don't feel dizzy, sick, cold...?”

The way she listed the words reminded me of a doctor’s exam. And I didn’t feel cold or sick…or dizzy in a medical way. "Should I?"

She laughed. “I’m wondering if you’re going into shock,” she admitted. “I’ve seen it happen with less provocation.”

"I don't think that will happen. I've always been very good at repressing unpleasant things." Honestly, almost being attacked was not the most interesting that that had happened to me tonight, and I hadn’t really thought much about it.

"Just the same, I'll feel better when you have some food in you."

Right on cue, the waitress appeared with our drinks and a basket of breadsticks. She stood with her back to me as she placed them on the table, then handed Edythe a menu. Done with her experiments, she didn’t so much as look at her this time. She just pushed the menu across the table to me.

The waitress cleared her throat nervously. “There are a few specials. We have a mushroom ravioli and—“

“Sounds great,” I interrupted; I didn’t care what I got—food was the last thing on my mind. “I’ll have that.” I spoke a little louder than necessary, but I wasn’t sure the waitress really knew I was sitting here.

She finally threw a surprised glance my way, and then her attention was back on Edythe.

“And for you?”

“That’s all we need. Thank you.”

Of course.

She waited for a second, hoping for another smile, I thought. A glutton for punishment. When Edythe kept her eyes on me, she gave up and walked away.

"Drink," Edythe said. It sounded like an order.

I sipped at my soda obediently, and then drank more deeply, surprised by how thirsty I was. I realized I had finished the whole thing when she pushed her glass toward me.

“No, I’m fine,” I told her.

“ _I’m_ not going to drink it,” she said, and her tone added the _duh_.

"Right,” I said and, because I _was_ still thirsty, I downed hers too.

“Thanks,” I muttered, while the word I didn’t want to think swirled around my head again. The cold from the soda was radiating through my chest and I had to shake off a shiver.

"Are you cold?" she asked, serious now. Like a doctor again.

"It's just the Coke," I explained, shivering again.

"Don't you have a jacket?" Her voice was disapproving.

"Yes." I looked at the empty bench next to me. "Oh - I left it in Jessica's car," I realized. I shrugged.

Edythe started unwinding a bone-colored scarf from around her neck. I realized that I’d never once really noticed what she was wearing—not just tonight, but ever. The only thing I could remember was the black gown from my nightmare. But though I hadn’t processed the particulars, I knew that in reality she always wore light colors. Like tonight—under the scarf she had on a pale gray leather jacket, cut short like motorcycle gear, and a thing whit turtleneck sweater. I was pretty sure she usually kept her skin covered, which made me thing of the deep V of the black dream gown again, and that was a mistake. Warmth started to bloom on my neck and cheeks.

“Here,” she said, tossing the scarf to me. “I stole this from Alice, I don’t really need it.”

"Thanks," I said again. I grabbed the scarf from the table—it was very soft, and not at all warm, the way it should be after coming off someone’s body—and started to wrap it around my neck. I’d never worn a scarf that I could remember, so I just wound it in a circle until I ran out of fabric. At least I would cover the red on my neck. Maybe I _should_ own a scarf.

This one smelled amazing, and familiar. I realized this was a hint of the fragrance from the car. It must be her.

"That color blue looks lovely with your skin," she said, watching me. I was surprised; I looked down, flushing, of course.

“Did I do it right?” I asked, tugging at the scarf. The soft knit was already warming to my skin, and it did help.

“It suits you,” she said, but then she laughed, so I guessed that meant the answer was no.

“Do you steal a lot of things from Alice?”

She shrugged. “She has the best taste. She dresses us most of the time.”

“You never told me about your family. We ran out of time the other day.” Was it only last Thursday? It seemed like a lot longer.

She pushed the bread basket toward me.

"Really, I'm not going into shock," I protested.

“Humor me?” she said, and then she did the thing with the smile and the eyes that always won.

“Ugh,” I grumbled as I grabbed a breadstick.

“Good girl,” she laughed.

I just gave her a dark look as I chewed.

"I don’t know how you can be so blasé about this,” she said. “You don't even look shaken." She seemed unsettled. She stared into my eyes, and I saw how light her eyes were, lighter than I'd ever seen them, golden butterscotch. “But then, you’re not so normal, are you?”

“I’m the most normal person I know.”

“Everyone thinks that about themselves.”

“Do you think that about _yourself_?” I challenged.

She pursed her lips.

"I feel very safe with you," I confessed, mesmerized into telling the truth again.

That displeased her; her alabaster brow furrowed. She shook her head, frowning.

"This is more complicated than I'd planned," she murmured to himself.

“Right,” I said. “Do you ever consider answering any of my questions, or it that not even on the table?”

“It depends on the question.”

“So tell me one I’m allowed to ask.”

She was still thinking about that when the waitress strode around the partition with my food. I realized we'd been unconsciously leaning toward each other across the table, because we both straightened up as she approached. She set the dish in front of me - it looked pretty good - and turned quickly to Edythe.

"Did you change your mind?" she asked. "Isn't there anything I can get you?" I may have been imagining the double meaning in her words, but I didn’t think so.

"No, thank you, but some more soda would be nice." She gestured to the empty glasses without looking away from me.

The waitress stared at me now, and I could tell she was wondering why someone like Edythe would be looking at someone like me that way. Well, it was a mystery to me, too.

"Sure." She removed the empty glasses and walked away.

“I imagine you have a lot of questions for me,” Edythe murmured.

“Just a couple thousand,” I said.

“I’m sure. Can I ask you one first? Is that unfair?”

Did that mean she was going to answer mine? I nodded eagerly. “What do you want to know?”

She stared down at the table now, her eyes hidden under her black lashes. Her hair fell forward, shielding more of her face.

The words weren’t much more than a whisper. “We spoke before, about how you were…trying to figure out what I am. I was just wondering if you’d made any more progress with that.”

I didn’t answer, and finally she looked up. I was glad for the scarf again, though it couldn’t hide the red I could feel creeping up into my face.

What could I say? Had I made progress? Or just stumbled into another theory even more stupid than radioactive spiders? How could I say that word out loud, the one I’d been trying not to think all night?

I don’t know what my face must have looked like, but her expression suddenly softened.

“It’s that bad, then?” she asked.

“Can I—can we not talk about it here?” I glanced at the thin partition that separated us from the rest of the restaurant.

“Very bad,” she murmured, half to herself. There was something very sad and…almost old about her eyes. Tired, defeated. It hurt me in a strange way to see her unhappy.

“Well,” I said, trying to make my voice lighter. “Actually, if I answer your question first, I know you won’t answer mine. You never do. So…you first.”

Her face relaxed. “An exchange, then?”

“Yes.”

The waitress returned with the cokes. She set them on the table without a word this time and disappeared. I wondered if she could feel the tension as strongly as I could.

“I suppose we can try that,” Edythe said. “But no promises.”

“Okay…” I started with the most undemanding. Or so I thought. "What brings you to Port Angeles?"

She looked down, folding her hands together slowly on the table. Her eyes flickered up at me from under her lashes, and there was a hint of a smile on her face.

"Next."

"But that's the easiest one," I objected.

"Next," she repeated.

I looked down, frustrated. I unrolled my silverware, picked up my fork, and carefully speared a ravioli. I put it in my mouth slowly, still looking down, chewing while I thought. The mushrooms were good. I swallowed and took another sip of Coke before I looked up.

"Okay, then." I glared at her, and continued slowly. "Let's say, hypothetically of course, that... someone... could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know - with a few exceptions." It sounded so stupid. There was no way, if she wouldn’t comment on the first one…

But then she looked at me calmly and said, "Just one exception. Hypothetically."

_Well, damn._

"All right, with one exception, then." I was thrilled that she was playing along, but I tried to seem casual. "How does that work? What are the limitations? How would... that someone... find someone else at exactly the right time? How would she know she was in trouble?" I wondered if my convoluted questions even made sense.

"Hypothetically?" she asked.

"Sure."

"Well, if... that someone..."

"Let's call her 'Jane,'" I suggested.

She smiled wryly. "Jane, then. If Jane had been paying attention, the timing wouldn't have needed to be quite so exact." She shook her head, rolling her eyes. "I’m still not over how this could happen at all. How does anyone get into so much trouble, so consistently, and in such unlikely places? Only you could get into trouble in a town this small. You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know."

“Victim blaming?” I shot back. “I don’t see how this is my fault.”

She stared at me, that familiar frustration in her eyes. “I don’t, either.”

"We were speaking of a hypothetical case," I reminded her.

She laughed at me, her eyes warm.

"Yes, we were," she agreed. "Shall we call you 'Jill'?"

"How did you know?" I asked, unable to curb my intensity. I realized I was leaning toward her again.

She seemed to be wavering, torn by some internal dilemma. Her eyes locked with mine, and I guessed she was making the decision right then whether or not to simply tell me the truth.

"You can trust me, you know," I murmured. I reached forward, without thinking, to touch her folded hands, but she slid them back an inch, so I let my hand fall empty to the table.

“It’s what I want to do,” she admitted, her voice even quieter than mine. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“Please?” I asked.

She hesitated one more second, and then it came out in a rush.

"I followed you to Port Angeles. I've never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it's much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that's probably just because it's you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes. I was wrong about you on one other thing, as well. You're not a magnet for accidents - that's not a broad enough classification. You are a magnet for _trouble._ If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you." She paused. I wondered if it should bother me that she was following me; instead I felt a strange surge of pleasure. She was here for _me_. She stared, maybe wondering why my lips were curving into an involuntary smile.

I thought about what she’d said—tonight, and before. _Do you think I could be scary?_

"And you put yourself into that category?" I guessed.

Her face turned cold, expressionless. "Unequivocally."

I stretched my hand across the table again, ignoring her when she pulled back slightly once more, to touch the back of her hand shyly with my fingertips. She kept them very still. It made them feel like stone—cold, hard, and now motionless. I thought of the statue again.

"Thank you." My voice was fervent with gratitude. "That's twice now."

She just stared at me, her mouth twitching into a frown.

I tried to ease the tension, make a joke. "Did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and that you've been interfering with fate?"

My joke fell flat. Her frown deepened.

“Edythe?”

She angled her face down again, her hair falling across her cheeks, and I could barely hear her anser. "That wasn't the first time," she said. "Your number was up the first time I met you. It’s not twice you’ve almost died, it’s three times. The first time I saved you…it was from myself."

I felt a spasm of fear at her words, and the abrupt memory of her violent black glare that first day... but the overwhelming sense of safety I felt in her presence stifled it. By the time she looked up to read my eyes, there was no trace of fear in them.

"You remember?" she asked, her angel's face grave.

"Yes." I was calm.

She waited for more, for another reaction. When I didn’t say anything her eyebrows pulled together.

“You can leave, you know,” she told me. “Your friends are still here. They decided to see a movie.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

She was suddenly irritated. “How can you say that?”

I patted her hands, totally calm. This was something I had already decided. It didn’t matter to me if she was…something dangerous. But _she_ mattered. Where she was, was where I wanted to be.

“You didn’t finish answering my question,” I reminded her, ignoring her anger. “How did you find me?”

She pressed her lips together, staring at me through narrowed eyes, deciding again. Her eyes flashed down to my full plate, and then back to me.

"You eat, I'll talk," she bargained.

I quickly scooped up another ravioli and popped it in my mouth. I left one of my hands on top of hers. She didn’t move them.

"I was keeping tabs on Jessica’s thoughts,” she said, like it was the most normal thing. “Not carefully - like I said, only you could find trouble in Port Angeles. At first I didn't notice when you took off on your own. Then, when I realized that you weren't with her anymore, I went looking for you at the bookstore I saw in her head. I could tell that you hadn't gone in, and that you'd gone south... and I knew you would have to turn around soon. So I was just waiting for you, randomly searching through the thoughts of people on the street - to see if anyone had noticed you so I would know where you were. I had no reason to be worried... but I was strangely anxious..." She was lost in thought, staring past me, seeing things I couldn't imagine.

"I started to drive in circles, still... listening. The sun was finally setting, and I was about to get out and follow you on foot. And then -" She stopped suddenly, her teeth clenching together with an audible snap.

"Then what?" I whispered.

She refocused on my face. "I heard what they were thinking," she growled, her upper lip curling slightly back over her teeth. "I saw your face in his mind, and I knew what they he was planning to do.”

“But you got there in time.”

"It was very... hard - you can't imagine how hard - for me to simply take you away, and leave them... alive."

I tried on to picture what she would have done if I hadn’t made her drive away. I didn’t want ot let my imagination run wild down that particular path.

“That’s one reason I made you go to dinner with me,” she admitted. “I could have let you go with Jessica and Angela, but I was afraid if you left me alone, I would go looking for them.”

My hand still rested on top of hers. My fingers were starting to feel numb, but I didn’t care. If she didn’t object, I’d never move again. She kept watching me, waiting for a reaction that wasn’t going to come.

I knew she was trying to warn me off with all this honesty, but she was wasting the effort.

"Are you ready to go home?" she asked.

"I'm ready to leave," I qualified, overly grateful that we had the hour-long ride home together. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to her.

“Can I have my hands back now?” she asked.

I snatched my hand away. “Sure. Sorry.”

She shot me a glance while she pulled something from her pocket. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Oh,” I flushed again. “Okay.” Did that mean she liked it when I touched her?

She laughed once, and then the waitress appeared around the partition.

"How are we doing?" she asked Edythe.

"We're ready for the check, thank you."

"S-sure," she stuttered. "Here you go." She pulled a small leather folder from the front pocket of her black apron and handed it to Edythe.

There was a bill in her hand already. She slipped it into the folder and handed it right back to the waitress.

"No change." She smiled. Then she stood up, and I scrambled awkwardly to my feet.

The waitress smiled invitingly at Edythe again. "You have a nice evening."

She didn't look away from me as she thanked her. I suppressed a smile. She walked away, and I rushed to follow. I passed her, hurrying to get the door. I knew she was faster than I could probably imagine, but the half-filled room of watching people forced her to act like she was one of them. She gave me a strange look when I held the door open—like she was kind of touched by the gesture, but also annoyed by it at the same time.

I remembered what Jessica had said about her relationship with McKayla, how they were almost to the first-kiss stage. I sighed. Edythe seemed to hear me, and she looked back curiously. I looked at the sidewalk, grateful that she didn't seem to be able to know what I was thinking.

She opened the passenger door of the car, holding it for me as I stepped in, shutting it softly behind me. I watched her walk around the front of the car, amazed, yet again, by how graceful she was. I probably should have been used to that by now - but I wasn't. I had a feeling Edythe wasn't the kind of person anyone got used to.

Once inside the car, she started the engine and turned the heater on high. It had gotten very cold, and I guessed the good weather was at an end. I was warm with her scarf around my neck, though, breathing in the scent of it when I thought she couldn't see.

Edythe pulled out through the traffic, apparently without a glance, flipping around to head toward the freeway.

"Now," she said with a grim smile, "it's your turn."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was actually really complicated to change, so if you see any mistakes in pronouns and stuff, please point them out to me.


	10. Theory

 

"Can I ask just one more?" I pleaded as Edythe accelerated much too quickly down the quiet street. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to the road.

I was in no hurry to answer her question.

She sighed and shook her head. “We had a deal.”

“It’s not really a question,” I argued. “Just a clarification of something you said before.”

She rolled her eyes. “Make it quick.”

"Well... you said you knew I hadn't gone into the bookstore, and that I had gone south. I was just wondering how you knew that."

She looked away, deliberating.

"I thought we were past all the evasiveness," I grumbled.

She gave me a kind of _you asked for it_ look. "Fine, then. I followed your scent." She looked at the road, giving me time to compose my face. I couldn't think of an acceptable response to that, but I filed it carefully away for future study. I tried to refocus. I wasn't ready to let her be finished, now that she was finally explaining things.

"And then you didn't answer one of my first questions..." I stalled.

“Oh, come _on_.”

“I’m serious. You didn’t tell me how it works—the mind reading thing. Can you read anybody's mind, anywhere? How do you do it? Can the rest of your family do the same thing?" I felt silly, asking for clarification on make-believe. It was easier to talk about this in the dark car. The streetlights were behind us already, and in the low gleam from the dashboard, all the crazy stuff seemed just a little more possible.

It seemed like she felt the same sense of non-reality, like normality was on hold for as long as we were in this space together. Her voice was casual as she answered.

"That's more than one," she pointed out. I simply intertwined my fingers and gazed at her, waiting.

"No, it's just me. And I can't hear anyone, anywhere. I have to be fairly close. The more familiar someone's... 'voice' is, the farther away I can hear them. But still, no more than a few miles." She paused thoughtfully. "It's a little like being in a huge hall filled with people, everyone talking at once. It's just a hum - a buzzing of voices in the background. Until I focus on one voice, and then what they're thinking is clear.

"Most of the time I tune it all out - it can be very distracting. And then it's easier to seem _normal_ " - she frowned as she said the word - "when I'm not accidentally answering someone's thoughts rather than their words."

"Why do you think you can't hear me?" I asked curiously.

She stared at me, eyes seeming to bore right through mine, with that frustrated look I knew well. I realized now that each time she’d looked at me this way, she must have been trying to hear my thoughts, and failing. Her expression relaxed as she gave up.

"I don't know," she murmured. "The only guess I have is that maybe your mind doesn't work the same way the rest of theirs do. Like your thoughts are on the AM frequency and I'm only getting FM." She grinned at me, suddenly amused.

"My mind doesn't work right? I'm a freak?" The words bothered me more than they should - probably because her speculation hit home. I'd always suspected as much, and it embarrassed me to have it confirmed.

"I hear voices in my mind and you're worried that _you're_ the freak," she laughed. "Don't worry, it's just a theory..." Her face tightened. "Which brings us back to you."

I sighed. How to begin?

"Aren't we past all the evasions now?" she reminded me softly.

I looked away from her face for the first time, trying to find words. I happened to notice the speedometer.

"Holy crap!" I shouted.

"What's wrong?" She was startled. She looked right and left, rather than straight ahead where she should be looking. The car didn't decelerate.

"You're going a hundred miles an hour!" I was still shouting. I shot a panicky glance out the window, but it was too dark to see much. The road was only visible in the long patch of bluish brightness from the headlights. The forest along both sides of the road was like a black wall - as hard as a wall of steel if we veered off the road at this speed.

"Relax, Bella." She rolled her eyes, still not slowing.

"Are you trying to kill us?" I demanded.

"We're not going to crash."

I tried to modulate my voice. "Why are you in such a hurry, Edythe?"

"I always drive like this." She turned to flash a smile at me.

"Keep your eyes on the road!"

"I've never been in an accident, Bella - I've never even gotten a ticket." She grinned and tapped her forehead. "Built-in radar detector."

"Very funny." I fumed. "Charlie's a cop, remember? I was raised to abide by traffic laws. Besides, if you turn us into a Volvo pretzel around a tree trunk, you can probably just walk away."

"Probably," she agreed with a short, hard laugh. "But you can't." She sighed, and I watched with relief as the needle gradually drifted toward eighty. "Happy?"

"Almost."

"I hate driving slow," she muttered.

"This is slow?"

"Enough commentary on my driving," she snapped. "I'm still waiting for you to answer my question."

I forced my eyes away from the road in front of us, but I didn’t know where to look. It was hard to look at her face, knowing the word I was going to have to say now. My anxiety must have been pretty obvious.

"I promise I won’t laugh this time,” she said gently.

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Then what?”

“That you’ll be…upset. Unhappy.”

"Is it that bad?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

She lifted her hand off the gearshift and held it out toward me—just a few centimeters. An offer. I glanced up quickly, to make sure I understood, and her eyes were soft.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can handle it.”

I took her hand, and she curled her fingers very lightly around mine for one short second, then dropped her hand back to the gearshift. Carefully, I placed my hand over the top of hers again. I ran my thumb along the outside of her hand, tracing from her wrist to the tip of her pinkie finger. Her skin was so _soft_ —not that it had any give at all, no, but soft like satin. Smoother, even.

"The suspense is killing me, Bella,” she whispered.

"I don't know how to start," I admitted.

Another long moment of silence, just the purr of the engine and the sound of my hitching breath. I couldn’t hear hers at all. I traced back down the side of her perfect hand.

"Why don't you start at the beginning,” she suggested, her voice more normal now. Practical. “You said you didn't come up with this on your own."

"No."

"What got you started - a book? A movie?" she probed.

"No - it was Saturday, at the beach." I risked a glance up at her face. She looked puzzled.

"I ran into an old family friend –Jules, Julie Black," I continued. "Her mom and Charlie have been friends since I was a baby."

She still looked confused.

"Her mom, Bonnie, is one of the Quileute elders." I watched her carefully.

Her confused expression froze in place. It was like all the planes of her face had suddenly hardened into ice. Oddly, she was even more beautiful like that, a goddess again in the light of the dashboard dials. She didn’t look very human though.

She stayed frozen, so I felt compelled to explain the rest.

“There was this Quileute woman on the beach—Sam something. Lauren made a comment about you—trying to make fun of me. And this Sam said your family didn’t come to the reservation, only it sounded like she meant something more than that. Jules seemed like she knew what the woman was talking about, so I got her alone and…well I kind of forced her to tell me the old Quileute legends.”

I was surprised when she spoke—her face was so still, and her lips barely moved.

“And what were those legends? What did Jules Black tell you I was?”

I was worried suddenly, worried about protecting Jules.

"She just thought it was a silly superstition," I said quickly. "She didn't expect me to think anything of it." It didn't seem like enough; I had to confess. "It was my fault, I tricked her into telling me."

She startled me by laughing. I glared at her. She was laughing, but her eyes were fierce, staring ahead.

"Tricked her how?" she asked.

"I tried to flirt - it worked better than I thought it would." Disbelief colored my tone as I remembered.

"I'd like to have seen that." She chuckled darkly. "And you accused me of dazzling people - poor Julie Black."

I blushed and looked out my window into the night.

“So?” she prompted when I didn’t say anything else.

I half-opened my mouth and closed it again.

“What?”

“I don’t want to say it,” I admitted.

“It’s not my favorite word either.” Her face had warmed up a little; she looked human again. “Not saying it doesn’t make it go away, though. Sometimes…I think _not_ saying it makes it more powerful.”

I wondered if she was right.

“Vampire?” I whispered.

She flinched.

Nope. Saying it out loud didn’t make it any less powerful.

Funny how it didn’t sound stupid anymore, like it had in my room. It didn’t feel like we were talking about impossible things, about old legends or silly horror movies or paperback books. It felt real.

And very powerful.

We drove in silence for another minute, and the word _vampire_ seemed to get bigger and bigger inside the car. It didn’t feel like it belonged to her, really, but more like it had the power to hurt her. I tried to think of something, anything to say to erase the sound of it.

Before I could come up with anything, she spoke.

"What did you do then?"

"I did some research on the Internet."

"And did that convince you?" Her voice sounded barely interested. But her hands were clamped hard onto the steering wheel.

"No. Nothing fit. Most of it was kind of silly. But I just—“

I stopped abruptly. She waited, then stared at me when I didn’t finish.

"You what?" she pushed.

“Well, I mean, it doesn’t matter, right? So I just let it go.”

Her eyes grew wider and wider, and then suddenly they were narrowed into little slits, glaring at me. I didn’t want to point out to her again that she should probably be watching where she was going, but her speed had crept up to past ninety-five now, and she seemed totally unaware of the twisting road ahead of us.

“Um, Edythe—“

“It doesn’t _matter_?” she half-shouted at me, her voice going shrill and almost…metallic. “ _It doesn’t matter_?”

“No. Not to me, anyway.”

“You don’t care if I’m a monster? If I’m not human?”

“No.”

Finally she stared at the road again, her eyes still long slashes of anger across her face. I could feel the car accelerating under me.

“You’re upset. See, I shouldn’t have said anything,” I mumbled.

She shook her head, then answered through her teeth. "No, I'd rather know what you're thinking - even if what you're thinking is insane."

"So I'm wrong again?" I challenged.

"That's not what I was referring to. ’It doesn't matter'!" she quoted, gritting her teeth together.

"I'm right?" I gasped.

"Does it matter?"

I took a deep breath.

"Not really."

She blew out an exasperated sigh, and then it was quiet again for a few minutes. I stroked by thumb slowly up and down her hand.

“What are you thinking about now?” she asked. Her voice was calmer.

“Nothing, really.”

“It drives me crazy, not knowing.”

“I don’t want to…I don’t know, offend you or something.”

“Spit it out, Bella.”

“I have a lot of questions. But you don’t have to answer them. I’m just curious."

She was suddenly resigned. "What are you curious about?"

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen," she answered promptly.

I stared at her for a minute, until half her mouth twitched up into a smile.

"And how long have you been seventeen?"

"A while," she admitted at last.

"Okay." I smiled, pleased that she was still being honest with me. She stared back at me with watchful eyes, much as she had before, when she was worried I would go into shock. I smiled wider in encouragement, and she frowned.

This was better, though. Easier, with her just being herself, not worrying about keeping me in the dark. I liked being on the inside. Her world was where I wanted to be.

"Don't laugh - but how can you come out during the daytime?"

She laughed anyway. "Myth."

The sound of her laughter was warm. It made me feel like I had swallowed a bunch of sunlight. My smile got bigger.

"Burned by the sun?"

"Myth."

"Sleeping in coffins?"

"Myth." She hesitated for a moment, and a peculiar tone entered her voice. "I can't sleep."

It took me a minute to absorb that. "At all?"

"Never," she said, her voice nearly inaudible. She turned to look at me with a wistful expression. The golden eyes held mine, and I lost my train of thought.

Suddenly she turned away, her eyes narrowing again. "You haven't asked me the most important question yet."

I blinked, still dazed. "Which one is that?"

"You aren't _curious_ about my diet?" she asked sarcastically.

"Oh," I murmured, "that."

"Yes, that." Her voice was bleak. "Don't you want to know if I drink blood?"

I flinched. "Well, Jules said something about that."

“Did she now?”

"She said you didn't... hunt people. She said your family wasn't supposed to be dangerous because you only hunted animals."

"She said we weren't dangerous?" Her voice was deeply skeptical.

"Not exactly. She said you weren't supposed to be dangerous. But the Quileutes still didn't want you on their land, just in case."

She looked forward, but I couldn't tell if she was watching the road or not.

"So was she right? About not hunting people?" I tried to keep my voice as even as possible.

"The Quileutes have a long memory," she whispered.

I took it as a confirmation.

"Don't let that make you complacent, though," she warned me. "They're right to keep their distance from us. We are still dangerous."

"I don't understand."

"We…try," she explained. He voice got heavier and slower. "We're usually very good at what we do. Sometimes we make…mistakes. Me, for example, allowing myself to be alone with you."

"This is a mistake?" I heard the sadness in my voice, but I didn't know if she could as well.

"A very dangerous one," she murmured.

We were both silent then. I watched the headlights twist with the curves of the road. They moved too fast; it didn't look real, it looked like a video game. I was aware of the time slipping away so quickly, like the black road beneath us, and I was hideously afraid that I would never have another chance to be with her like this again - openly, the walls between us gone for once. Her words hinted at an end, and I recoiled from the idea. My hand tightened over hers. I couldn't waste one minute I had with her.

"Tell me more," I asked desperately, not caring what she said, just so I could hear her voice again.

She looked at me quickly, startled by the change in my tone. "What more do you want to know?"

"Tell me why you hunt animals instead of people," I said, my voice still tinged with desperation. It was the first question I could think of. I realized my eyes were wet, and I fought against the grief that was trying to overpower me.

"I don't _want_ to be a monster." Her voice was very low.

"But animals aren't enough?"

She paused. "I can't be sure, of course, but I'd compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke. It doesn't completely satiate the hunger - or rather thirst. But it keens us strong enough to resist. Most of the time." Her tone turned ominous. "Sometimes it's more difficult than others."

"Is it very difficult for you now?" I asked.

She sighed. "Yes."

"But you're not hungry now," I said confidently - stating, not asking.

"Why do you think that?"

"Your eyes. I told you I had a theory. I've noticed that people are crabbier when they're hungry."

She laughed. “You’re more observant than I gave you credit for.”

I listened to the sound of her laugh, committing it to memory.

“So everything I thought I saw—that day with the van. That all happened for real. You _caught_ the van.”

She shrugged. “Yes.”

“How strong are you?”

She glanced at me from the side of her eye. “Strong enough.”

“Like, could you lift five thousand pounds?”

She looked a little thrown by my enthusiasm. “If I needed to. But I’m not much into feats of strength. They just make Eleanor competitive, and I’ll never be _that_ strong.”

“How strong?”

“Honestly, if she wanted to, I think she could lift a mountain over her head. But I would never that that around her, because then she would have to try.” She laughed, and it was a relaxed sound. Affectionate.

"Were you hunting this weekend, with Eleanor?" I asked when it was quiet again.

"Yes." She paused for a second, as if deciding whether or not to say something. "I didn't want to leave, but it was necessary. It's a bit easier to be around you when I'm not thirsty."

"Why didn't you want to leave?"

"It makes me... anxious... to be away from you." Her eyes were gentle, but intense, and they made it hard to breathe in and out like normal. I felt like it was making my bones turn soft. "I wasn't joking when I asked you to try not to fall in the ocean or get run over last Thursday. I was distracted all weekend, worrying about you. And after what happened tonight, I'm surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed." She shook her head, and then seemed to remember something. "Well, not totally unscathed."

"What?"

"Your hands," she reminded me. I looked down at my palms, at the almost-healed scrapes across the heels of my hands. Her eyes missed nothing.

"I fell," I sighed.

"That's what I thought." Her lips curved up at the corners. "I suppose, being you, it could have been much worse - and that possibility tormented me the entire time I was away. It was a very long three days. I really got on Eleanor's nerves." She smiled ruefully at me.

"Three days? Didn't you just get back today?"

"No, we got back Sunday."

"Then why weren't any of you in school?" I was frustrated, almost angry as I thought of how much her absence had affected me.

"Well, you asked if the sun hurt me, and it doesn't. But I can't go out in the sunlight - at least, not where anyone can see."

"Why?"

"I'll show you sometime," she promised.

I thought about it for a moment. "You might have called me," I decided.

She was puzzled. "But I knew you were safe."

"Yeah, but _I_ didn't know where _you_ were. I -" I hesitated, dropping my eyes.

"What?" Her silky voice was as hypnotic as her eyes.

“It’s going to sound stupid…but, well, it kind of freaked me out. I thought you might not come back. That somehow you knew that I knew and…I was afraid you would disappear. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to see you again. I didn't like it. Not seeing you. It makes me anxious, too." I blushed to be saying it out loud.

She was quiet. I glanced up, apprehensive, and saw that her expression was pained.

“Edythe, are you okay?”

"Ah," she groaned quietly. "This is wrong."

I couldn't understand her response. "What did I say?"

"Don't you see, Bella? It's one thing for me to make myself miserable, but a wholly other thing for you to be so involved." She turned her anguished eyes to the road, her words flowing almost too fast for me to understand. "I don't want to hear that you feel that way." Her voice was low but urgent. Her words cut me. "It's wrong. It's not safe. I'm dangerous, Bella. You’ll be lucky to get out alive.”

"No." I tried very hard not to look like a sulky child. “I don’t care.”

"I'm serious," she growled.

"So am I. I told you, it doesn't matter what you are. It's too late."

Her voice whipped out, low and harsh. "Never say that. It’s _not_ too late. I can put things back the way they were. I _will_.”

I bit my lip and was glad she couldn't know how much that hurt. I stared out at the road. We must be close now. She was driving much too fast.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, her voice still raw. I just shook my head, not sure if I could speak. I could feel her gaze on my face, but I kept my eyes forward.

"Are you crying?" She sounded appalled. I hadn't realized the moisture in my eyes had brimmed over. I quickly rubbed my hand across my cheek, and sure enough, traitor tears were there, betraying me.

"No," I said, but my voice cracked.

She made a motion like she wanted to reach for me but then stopped herself.

"I'm sorry." Her voice burned with regret. I knew she wasn't just apologizing for the words that had upset me.

The darkness slipped by us in silence.

"Tell me something," she asked after another minute, and I could hear her struggle to use a lighter tone.

"Yes?"

"What were you thinking tonight, just before I came around the corner? I couldn't understand your expression - you didn't look that scared, you looked like you were concentrating very hard on something."

"I was trying to remember how to incapacitate an attacker - you know, self-defense. I was going to smash his nose into his brain." I thought of the dark-haired man with a surge of hate.

"You were going to fight them?" This upset her. "Didn't you think about running?"

"I fall down a lot when I run," I admitted.

"What about screaming for help?"

"I was getting to that part."

She shook her head. "You were right - I'm definitely fighting fate trying to keep you alive."

I sighed. We were slowing, passing into the boundaries of Forks. It had taken less than twenty minutes.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" I demanded.

“Do you want to?” she whispered.

“More than anything else I’ve ever wanted.” It was pathetic how obviously true the words were. I didn’t even really understand my own feelings, only that I knew they were too intense.

She closed her eyes. The car didn’t deviate so much as half an inch from the center of the lane.

“Then I’ll be there,” she finally said. “I do have a paper to turn in.”

It was silly, after everything we'd been through tonight, how that little promise sent flutters through my stomach, and made me unable to speak.

We were suddenly in front of Charlie's house. The lights were on, my truck in its place, everything utterly normal. It was like waking from a dream. She stopped the car, but I didn't move.

“Save me a seat at lunch?” I asked hesitantly.

I was rewarded with a wide smile. “That’s easy enough.”

"Do you promise to be there tomorrow?" I couldn’t keep the tone light enough.

"I promise."

I stared into her eyes and it was like she was a magnet again, like she was pulling me toward her and I had no power to resist. I didn’t want to try. The word vampire was still there between us, but it was easier to ignore than I would have thought possible. Her face was so unbearably perfect, it hurt in a strange way to look at it. At the same time, I never wanted to look away. I wanted to know if her lips were as silky smooth as the skin of her hand—

Suddenly her left hand was there, palm forward, an inch from my face, warning me back, and she was cringing against the car door, her eyes wide and frightened and her teeth clenched together.

I jerked away from her.

“Sorry! I don’t know why I did that.”

She stared at me for a long moment, and I would swear she wasn’t breathing. She eventually relaxed a little.

“You have to be more careful than that, Bella,” she said finally in a dull voice.

Cautiously—like I was made of glass or something—her left hand lifted mine off her right and then let it go. I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Maybe—“ she began.

“I can do better than that,” I interrupted quickly. “Just tell me the rules, and I’ll follow them. Whatever you want from me.”

She sighed.

“Seriously. Tell me to do something and I’ll do it.”

I regretted the words the second they were out of my mouth. What if she asked me to forget about her? There were some things that weren’t’ in my power to do.

But she smiled. “All right, I’ve got one.”

“Yeah?” I asked, wary.

"Don't go into the woods alone again."

I stared at her in blank confusion. "How did you know that?”

She touched the tip of her nose.

“Really? You must have an incredible sense—“

“Are you going to agree to what I ask or not?” she interrupted.

“Sure, that’s easy. Why though?”

She frowned, and her eyes were tight as she stared past me out the window. "I'm not always the most dangerous thing out there. Let's leave it at that."

I shuddered slightly at the sudden bleakness in her voice, but I was relieved. This, at least, was an easy promise to honor. "Whatever you say."

"I'll see you tomorrow," she sighed, and I knew she wanted me to leave now.

"Tomorrow, then." I opened the door unwillingly.

"Bella?" I turned and she was leaning toward me, her pale, glorious face just inches from mine. My heart stopped beating.

"Sleep well," she said. Her breath blew in my face, stunning me. It was the same exquisite scent that clung to her jacket, but in a more concentrated form. I blinked, thoroughly dazed. She leaned away.

I was unable to move until my brain had somewhat unscrambled itself. Then I stepped out of the car awkwardly, having to use the frame for support. I thought I heard her chuckle, but the sound was too quiet for me to be certain.

She waited till I had stumbled to the front door, and then I heard her engine quietly rev. I turned to watch the silver car disappear around the corner. I realized it was very cold.

I reached for the key mechanically, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

Charlie called from the living room. "Bella?"

"Yeah, Ma, it's me." I walked in to see her on her favorite couch. She was watching a baseball game.

"You're home early."

"Am I?" I was surprised.

"It's not even eight yet," she told me. "Did you girls have fun?"

"Yeah - it was lots of fun." My head was spinning as I tried to remember all the way back to the girls' night out I had planned. "They both found dresses."

“What is that around your neck?”

I grabbed the scarf I’d forgotten and tried to yank it off, but it was wrapped too many times around my neck and I just choked myself.

“Uh—I forgot a coat—and someone lent me this scarf.”

"Oh. Are you all right? You look kind of pale."

“Aren’t I always kind of pale?”

“Guess so.”

"I'm just tired. I did a lot of walking."

"Well, maybe you should go lie down." She sounded concerned. I wondered what my face looked like.

"I'm just going to call Jessica first."

"Weren't you just with her?" she asked, surprised.

"Yes - but I left my jacket in her car. I want to make sure she brings it tomorrow."

"Well, give her a chance to get home first."

"Right," I agreed.

I went to the kitchen and fell, exhausted, into a chair. I was really feeling dizzy now. I wondered if I was going to go into shock after all. Get a grip, I told myself.

The phone rang suddenly, startling me. I yanked it off the hook.

"Hello?" I asked breathlessly.

"Bella?"

"Hey, Jess, I was just going to call you."

"You made it home?" Her voice was relieved... and surprised.

"Yes. I left my jacket in your car - could you bring it to me tomorrow?"

"Sure. But tell me what happened!" she demanded.

"Um, tomorrow - in Trig, okay?"

She caught on quickly. "Oh, is your dad there?"

"Yeah.”

"Okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow, then. Bye!" I could hear the impatience in her voice.

"Bye, Jess."

I walked up the stairs slowly, a heavy stupor clouding my mind. I went through the motions of getting ready for bed without paying any attention to what I was doing. It wasn't until I was in the shower - the water too hot, burning my skin - that I realized I was freezing. I shuddered violently for several minutes before the steaming spray could finally relax my rigid muscles. Then I stood in the shower, too tired to move, until the hot water began to run out.

I stumbled out, wrapping myself securely in a towel, trying to hold the heat from the water in so the aching shivers wouldn't return. I dressed for bed swiftly and climbed under my quilt, curling into a ball, hugging myself to keep warm. A few small shudders trembled through me.

My mind still swirled dizzily, full of images I couldn't understand, and some I fought to repress. Nothing seemed clear at first, but as I fell gradually closer to unconsciousness, a few certainties became evident.

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edythe was a vampire. Second, there was part of her - and I didn't know how potent that part might be - that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with her.

 


End file.
